Editors-in-chief

Benoît Crucifix

Benoît Crucifix is assistant professor of Cultural Studies at KU Leuven and lead researcher of the Pop Heritage Lab at the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), under the impulse of a FED-tWIN funding. He is interested in the cultural memory, heritage, archives, and transmission of popular print culture across different contexts. He carried out his doctoral research at the University of Liège and UCLouvain under a FNRS fellowship and was a postdoctoral researcher on Maaheen Ahmed’s ERC-funded COMICS research program at Ghent University. He is the author of Drawing from the Archives: Comics Memory in the Contemporary Graphic Novel (2023).

Gaëlle Kovaliv

Gaëlle Kovaliv holds a degree in Modern French and Language Sciences from the University of Lausanne, and is currently working on her thesis on digital comics in French-speaking Europe as part of the FNS-funded interdisciplinary project Reconfiguring comics in our digital era. She is interested in the discourses, representations and practices of artists who publish for the screen, in particular comics on Instagram and Webtoon. She is currently co-director of BDFIL, Lausanne's comic strip festival.

Sylvain Lesage

Sylvain Lesage is a lecturer (maître de conferences) in contemporary history at the University of Lille, affiliated to the IRHiS (UMR 8529). As a specialist in cultural history, his research lies at the crossroads of book history, media history and visual cultures. In 2014, he defended a thesis under the supervision of Jean-Yves Mollier, published in part by Presses de l'Enssib (Publier la bande dessinée. Les éditeurs franco-belges et l'album, 2018) and in part by Presses universitaires François Rabelais (L'Effet livre: métamorphoses de la bande dessinée, 2019). Together with Gert Meesters, he also directed a collective research project on the magazine (À Suivre): (À Suivre). Archives d'une revue culte (2018). See his complete bibliography

Members of the editorial board

Sylvain Aquatias

A lecturer in sociology at the University of Limoges and a researcher at GRESCO (Sociological Research Group on Contemporary Societies), Sylvain Aquatias has been working on comics for around ten years, first on readership, then on collections and the legitimation of comics, and finally on comics authors. See his complete bibliography.

Michelle Bumatay

Michelle Bumatay is an Assistant Professor of French & Francophone Studies at Florida State University where she directs the Global Africas project. Her research centers on comics from Francophone Africa and the African Diaspora as well as on Francophone African literature, film, and visual culture. She has published several articles and chapters on francophone comics and her first monograph, On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power is forthcoming with The Ohio State University Press. For more, see her complete bibliography.

Thara Charland

Thara Charland is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Université du Québec à Montréal and a writer. She holds a doctorate in literature from Université de Montréal and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University from 2021 to 2023. Her research focuses on contemporary Quebecois comics, and more specifically on the imaginary of the metropolis and documentary practices in the sequential arts. She curated the Montréal Imaginaire exhibition at the Festival BD de Montréal in May 2024. Her second book, Cartographies du père, devoted mainly to the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, will be published in November 2024 by Presses de l'Université de Montréal.

Blanche Delaborde

After completing a master’s degree in history at the University of Strasbourg in 2005, with a thesis on the comics magazine Ah! Nana (1976-1978), Blanche Delaborde defended a master’s degree in Japanese studies at the University of Strasbourg in 2012, with a thesis on childhood in Matsumoto Taiyō’s manga, and in 2019 a PhD in Japanese studies at Inalco, about the poetics of impressifs graphiques (i.e., onomatopoeia) in manga (1986-1996). She is a member of the comics research association La Brèche, and since 2021 has been taking part in the IFRAE (Institut Français de Recherche sur l'Asie de l’Est) research program, as a post-doctoral fellow, on the project “Sources visuelles, sources textuelles: approches interdisciplinaires de l'image.” Her research aims to use the analysis of formal elements in comics and manga to achieve a detailed study of the works. His current interests are the status of the written word in comics and the processes of representing consciousness.

Christophe Dony

Christophe Dony holds a PhD in languages and literature, with a thesis on the rewriting policy of the American comics label Vertigo. He currently works as a librarian at the University of Liège. His research interests focus on open science issues, American comics and postcolonial studies. He co-edited, with Véronique Bragard and Warren Rosenberg, Portraying 9/11: Essays on Representations in Comics, Literature, Film and Theatre (2011) and, with Gert Meesters and Tanguy Habrand, La bande dessinée en dissidence / Comics in Dissent (2014).

Björn-Olav Dozo

Björn-Olav Dozo is a teacher-researcher at the University of Liège. He is one of the founding members of the COnTEXTES group, whose journal he co-edited (2006-2011), and of the “ACME” comics study group (since 2008), whose book collection he coordinates. Since 2013, his research has focused on video games as cultural objects. He is one of the co-founders of the Liège Game Lab, whose activities can be followed on social networks (@LiegeGameLab on Twitter) and on their website. He also co-directs the Presses universitaires de Liège, the Centre informatique de Philosophie et Lettres (CIPL) and the Cellule d'Appui à la Recherche et à l'Enseignement (CARE) universitaire “Digital Tools | Outils numériques”. See full bibliography.

Margaret Flinn

Margaret C. Flinn is Associate Professor of French Studies and Film Studies at The Ohio State University, where she also serves on the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. Her research focuses primarily on French and Francophone cinema, but she has published a number of articles on French comics, and she regularly organizes training workshops for primary and secondary school teachers on the use of comics in language courses. See her full bibliography.

Nicolas Labarre

Nicolas Labarre is professor of American studies at University of Bordeaux Montaigne. He is author of Understanding Genres in Comics, La Bande Dessinée Contemporaine, and Heavy Metal, l’autre Métal Hurlant, and his work has been published in numerous edited collections and journals such as Image & Narrative, Comicalités. Études de culture graphique, and Comics and Videogames: From Hybrid Medialities to Transmedia Expansions. See his full bibliography.

Isabelle Licari-Guillaume

Dr Isabelle Licari-Guillaume is Assistant Lecturer (maîtresse de conférences) in Anglophone Studies at the Aix Marseille Université, France. She specialises in anglophone comics and cultural history. She published her first monography, Vertigo Comics: British creators, US editors, and the making of a transformational imprint, with Routledge in 2022. Her current research focuses on comics self-publishing in the 1980s and 1990s. She also translated Craig Thompson’s graphic novels into French, including the recent Racines (Ginseng Roots) with Casterman.

Gert Meesters

Gert Meesters is assistant lecturer (maître de conferences) in Dutch language and culture at the University of Lille. His research focuses on Dutch-language comics in an international context. He co-created the Acme comics research group and recently co-edited Les métamorphoses de Spirou. Le dynamisme d'une série de bande dessinée (with Frédéric Paques and David Vrydaghs) and (À Suivre). Les archives d'une revue culte (with Sylvain Lesage). See his full bibliography.

(portrait par Bart Schoofs)

Maëlys Tirehote-Corbin

Maëlys Tirehote-Corbin is a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Lausanne. After studying gender norms in comics programs, she is now working on the careers of comic book authors, and in particular on the resources they mobilize to be able to exercise this profession. She is a member of the Bréchoises working group, dedicated to the creation and promotion of a comics heritage. She is also a member of La Brèche and GrEBD.

Eva Van de Wiele

Eva Van de Wiele is FWO postdoctoral researcher at the universities of Ghent and Antwerp. Her comparative research titled ‘Reading Mickey’ studies the reception of the children’s comics magazine Journal de Mickey (France) and Topolino (Italy) between the 1930s and the 1960s. She is a guest lecturer at LUCA School of Arts Brussels, where she co-teaches comics history with Sébastien Conard. In collaboration with Dona Pursall, she coedited an open-access volume on girls in comics, Sugar, Spice, and the Not So Nice (Leuven UP, 2023).

(portrait par Josean Morlesín)

Past members

Julien Baudry

Benoît Berthou

Jacques Dürrenmatt

Catherine Ferreyrolle

Jessica Kohn

Marie Lorinquer-Hervé

Fabrice Preyat

Bounthavy Suvilay