Dr
Nina MickwitzProfile page
Senior Lecturer Contextual and Theoretical Studies
London College of Communication
- Senior Lecturer Contextual and Theoretical StudiesLondon 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 ExaminerSouthampton Solent University, School of Creative Industries, Architecture & Engineering, Southampton, United Kingdom7 Jan 2019 - 31 Jul 2023
DEGREES
- PhDUniversity of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom4 Oct 2010 - 30 Sep 2013
- BA (Hons) IllustrationUniversity of Lincoln, Lincoln, United Kingdom2003 - 2006
CERTIFICATIONS
- Fellowship of the Higher Education AcademyUniversity of the Arts London, London, United Kingdom6 Apr 2017 - present
POSTGRADUATE TRAINING
- PGCert in post-compulsory educationHull College, Hull, United Kingdom2008 - 2010
- Supervising Research DegreesUniversity of the Arts London, London, United Kingdom2016 - 2017
LANGUAGES
- FinnishCan read, write, speak and understand
- SwedishCan read, write, speak, understand and peer review
STAFF/STUDENT
- Staff