University of the Arts London staff research profiles homepage

Dr

Nina Mickwitz

Senior Lecturer Contextual and Theoretical Studies

London College of Communication

Orcid identifier0000-0002-0829-1813
  • Senior Lecturer Contextual and Theoretical Studies
    London College of Communication

BIO

Senior Lecturer in Contextual and Theoretical Studies at University of the Arts London (UAL) and one of the founding members of the Comics Research Hub@ UAL. 

My current research concerns social justice agendas across diverse genres of graphic storytelling. Social imaginaries provides a salient theoretical reference point for this project. As a comics scholar I am interested in questions of cultural hierarchies of value, and how popular culture provides a significant space for the reproduction and renegotiation of values and attitudes. Investigating and critically considering the roles played by aesthetics and storytelling conventions in works addressing a set of interconnected social justice themes and issues, my aim is to produce insights of value for readerships both within and beyond the field of Comics Studies. The work builds on previous in which I have written on  comics and graphic novels doing documentary work, graphic narrative representations of refugees and as a tool for advocacy, and about transformative imaginaries in speculative fiction and fantasy comics. The latest project aims to develop and bring together these threads to consider how social justice storytelling often sits across operational, yet unstable and porous, delineations between factual/fictional storytelling and to examine how tropes, motifs and conventions shape such stories.

Another strand of my research has brought valuablre insight into entrepreneurial and precarious, often transnational, networks of creative producers. 

Additional contributions to academic communities include regular peer reviews for academic journals and publishers and contributions to conferences in the UK and internationally, and I have also talked at public events.

UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS LONDON STAFF RESEARCH PROFILES GROUPS MEMBERSHIP

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • External Examiner
    Southampton Solent University, School of Creative Industries, Architecture & Engineering, Southampton, United Kingdom7 Jan 2019 - 31 Jul 2023

DEGREES

  • PhD
    University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom4 Oct 2010 - 30 Sep 2013
  • BA (Hons) Illustration
    University of Lincoln, Lincoln, United Kingdom2003 - 2006

CERTIFICATIONS

  • Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy
    University of the Arts London, London, United Kingdom6 Apr 2017 - present

POSTGRADUATE TRAINING

  • PGCert in post-compulsory education
    Hull College, Hull, United Kingdom2008 - 2010
  • Supervising Research Degrees
    University of the Arts London, London, United Kingdom2016 - 2017

LANGUAGES

  • Finnish
    Can read, write, speak and understand
  • Swedish
    Can read, write, speak, understand and peer review

STAFF/STUDENT

  • Staff