Who is behind the Website?
The Graphic Medicine website was started in 2007 by Ian Williams, a physician and artist from North Wales…
‘I am a physician, comics artist and writer, based in Brighton, UK. After training in medicine I took postgraduate studies in fine art and then an MA in medical humanities. I have taught at both medical schools and art schools, and have written book chapters, scholarly papers for various journals and articles for broadsheet newspapers. I started making comics under the nom de plume Thom Ferrier in 2007 but have since reverted to using my real name. My debut graphic novel, The Bad Doctor, was published in June 2014 by Myriad Editions.
I am a member of the advisory board for the International Health Humanities Network, a council member of the Association of Medical Humanities and joint series editor for a forthcoming book series from Penn State University Press. You can find me on twitter as @TheBadDr and MK and I also tweet as @GraphicMedicine.’
In 2012 Ian joined forces with MK Czerwiec, RN, MA to upgrade and relaunch GraphicMedicine.org, amalgamating part of MK’s site which hosted the Graphic Medicine Podcasts and conference information…
‘… I have been making comics under the pseudonym Comic Nurse since 2000. My clinical experience is in HIV/AIDS and hospice care. In 2009 I received an MA in Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern Feinberg Medical School, where I serve as Artist in Residence. The faculty there has been consistently supportive of my comics-based work. Catherine Belling and I developed an elective seminar called “Drawing Medicine” for Northwestern Feinberg’s M1 and M2 students which I teach twice a year. I presented my work and teaching in comics & medicine at the first Graphic Medicine conference in London in 2010, where I was thrilled to meet Ian Williams, Susan Squier, Michael Green, and Brian Fies. Together we organized the second Graphic Medicine conference in Chicago in 2010. I currently co-write for the Graphic Medicine website and host the Graphic Medicine podcast as well as working on other Graphic Medicine-related projects, lecturing, and teaching. In 2017 I was invited to become a Senior Fellow of the George Washington School of Nursing Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement where I hope to widen the perspective, scope, and audience for graphic medicine. My first graphic memoir, Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Unit 371, was published by Penn State University Press in 2017. It is the only currently known book length graphic memoir by a nurse. With many people listed here, I am a co-author of the Graphic Medicine Manifesto. My next book, no title yet, will focus on end of life care and will, of course, be in comic form. You can learn more about my work, get in touch, and see a calendar of my speaking engagements on my website, comicnurse.com. I tweet as @ComicNurse, @EOLComics, and @GraphicMedicine.’
In 2017 Matthew Noe‘s “This Week in Graphic Medicine” posts were migrated from his site to this one, and he officially joined our team.
‘I’m currently a medical librarian, specializing in the medical humanities, health communication, and literacy. My background is in philosophy, with a degree from the University of Kentucky, where I also earned my MSLS in 2016. Over the past few years, I have focused intensely on the use and value comics might have in medicine and education, leading me to the Graphic Medicine community. I have helped develop several graphic medicine collections throughout libraries in the United States and am always available to help develop collections or programming. In Fall 2016, I began running the weekly blog series This Week in Graphic Medicine after realizing just how much content and discussion was happening but was often hidden to those not looking for it. That series has since become part of the Graphic Medicine website and continues to evolve to meet the needs of the community. I am currently working on multiple research projects, the largest of which is a scoping review of the way comics have been used in medical education, in the hopes it will tell us what we know, what we don’t, and where we should go from here. You can find me on Twitter as @NoetheMatt.
Medicina Gráfica
In 2016, a group of wonderful people led by cartoonist-physician Monica Lalanda, put a great deal of hard work into creating a Spanish-language sister site to Graphic Medicine called Medicina Gráfica. Check it out!
What about the conferences?
Ian and MK are members of the committee that has organised the Graphic Medicine conferences together with their international collegues:
Susan Squier
‘I teach in the areas of medicine, literature and culture, women’s studies,
and science studies at Penn State University, where I am Brill Professor
of English and Women’s Studies. I have been writing about comics a while
now. My book Liminal Lives (2004) includes discussions of Ruben Bolling’s
“Bad Blastocyst” and Tom Tomorrow’s “Immortality for Achievers,” and my
articles on comics have appeared in the Journal of the Medical Humanities,
Literature and Medicine, Issues in Philosophy and Medicine, as well as one
which is forthcoming in Atrium (the magazine of Northwestern University’s
Medical Humanities and Bioethics program.) I also teach comics to
undergraduates and graduate students in the English Department: my
doctoral seminars in comics include an hour long component of “studio
time” where students and professor alike create comics. (As a rank
beginner at cartooning, I hope to model to the students the notion that
comics are open to anyone!) In 2011-2012, I served on the Jury for the
Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize,
http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/activities/ward/index.html. I am part of
the organizing collective of the international conferences on Comics and
Medicine, and with Ian Williams I co-edit the Penn State Press book
series, Graphic Medicine, which publishes critical and scholarly analyses
of graphic medicine as well as works of graphic medicine (comics)
themselves. My graphic avatar is a chicken.’
Michael Green
I am a physician and bioethicist by training, and a professor in the Departments of Humanities and Medicine at Penn State College of Medicine. I have been interested in comics (and all forms of visual arts) since childhood, and have been teaching a course on Comics and Medicine to 4th-year medical students for a number of years. The students’ comics can be viewed here: http://www.pennstatehershey.org/web/humanities/home/resources/comicbook
In my professional life, I care for patients as a general internist, teach medical students in the medical humanities and ethics, and have an active research agenda in the area of informed medical decision-making, ethics and the end of life, and advance care planning. https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/111634
I am also a passionate amateur photographer and fledgling watercolorist, but that’s for another day.
Along with Ian, MK and the others listed here, I have been one of the organizers of the Graphic Medicine conferences since their inception, and I will be serving on the Jury for the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize in 2012/2013. http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/activities/ward/index.html
Shelley Wall
I’m a medical artist and an assistant professor in the Biomedical Communications graduate program at the University of Toronto, where we train students in medical and scientific illustration and animation for a wide variety of audiences, and conduct and supervise research into the design, creation, and evaluation of visual media in medical and scientific contexts.
My interest in graphic medicine arises from two sources, which quickly merge into a single stream. The first is professional: medical illustration is a form of visual storytelling; it combines image & text, research & experience, time & space, language & line (and, and, and…) to convey complex messages, and so the affinity with comics seemed obvious, but not simple. The second is personal, and arose when it seemed that the only medium flexible enough to convey my individual experience with illness, caregiving, and the healthcare system was the graphic novel. In the same way that comics bring together image and text, drama and reflection, and humour and pathos, the study of comics seems to permit the symbiosis of academic and personal, of theory and raw experience, in a way that many other disciplines do not.
I had the privilege of co-organizing the third annual Comics & Medicine conference at the University of Toronto in July 2012. I teach a graduate elective course in Comics & Medicine, and, as illustrator-in-residence in the Health, Arts, and Humanities Program in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, am developing a curricular component on comics and medicine for the Faculty’s undergraduate medical training.
Biomedical Communications graduate program
Brian Fies
I am a writer and cartoonist whose first graphic novel, Mom’s Cancer, told the true story of my mother’s diagnosis and treatment for lung cancer. The comic was available as a free webcomic before being published by Abrams in 2006. Mom’s Cancer won the comics industry’s Eisner and Harvey awards, as well as the prestigious Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (German Youth Literature Prize). My second graphic novel, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? (Abrams 2009), has nothing to do with graphic medicine but still deserves a plug.I was invited to be a keynote speaker at the first Graphic Medicine Conference in London in 2010 and joined the organizing committee to help plan the Chicago 2011, Toronto 2012, and subsequent conferences. I live in northern California, where I continue to work as a freelance writer and make comics.
Maria Vaccarella
I am a Lecturer in Medical Humanities at the University of Bristol (UK). I met Ian and Columba at a conference in 2009, where we all happened to present on medically-themed graphic novels and we came up with the idea of a first conference on Graphic Medicine, which we then organized in London in June 2010.
I developed an interest in graphic medicine, while researching contemporary illness narratives. You can read a bit more about my academic work on graphic pathographies here. I am also an amateur mangaka, i.e. a firm believer that “big eyes will save the world”.
Lydia Gregg
I’m an instructor and medical illustrator in the Division of Interventional Neuroradiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. I teach medical illustration as part of a full time joint appointment in the Department of Art as Applied to Medicine. My work in radiology involves illustrating, animating and writing about the neurovascular conditions treated in the division for medicalpublications and websites. In addition, I create patient communication material such as brochures, medical comics and educational videos. I also write and draw comics and run ProAtlantal Studio with my husband, Fabian de Kok-Mercado. I’ve been creating and publishing comics that involve scientific and medical concepts for over a decade. First as shorts published in graphic anthologies, and now as part of my job as a medical illustrator. The doctors I work with manage and treat many rare and under-diagnosed cerebrovascular conditions. Some of these conditions can be more easily explained with imagery and a storyline that are relevant to the patient’s experiences and concerns. I’m interested in how comics can help patients by altering their perceptions of various conditions. I’m currently lead organizer of the 2014 Comics and Medicine conference.
Muna Al-Jawad (bio pending)
Andrew Godfrey (bio pending)
Juliet McMullin (bio pending)
Mita Mahato (bio pending)
and the book series?
There are details of the Graphic Medicine book series here.
Susan, Ian, Michael and MK sit on the editorial board together with Kimberley Myers and Scott T. Smith:
Scott Smith
I am an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University, with a primary research focus in the literature of Anglo-Saxon England. In addition to this specialization, though, I also regularly teach undergraduate classes on comics and graphic novels at Penn State. I’ve developed comics courses for both the English and Comparative Literature departments in order to meet the rising interest in the medium among both our students and faculty. I’ve been a life-long comics reader and I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to include them formally in the university curriculum at Penn State. I also served on the inaugural jury for the annual Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize and I’m currently a member of its advisory board. Finally, I am part of the editorial collective for the new Graphic Medicine series at the Pennsylvania State University Press. More than anything, I am excited by the open possibilities of the comics medium as well as by its ability to meet the interests of so many different creators and readerships.
Kimberly Myers (bio pending)
Kendra Boileau (bio pending)