Projects

Platelets, the 2nd most abundant cell in the blood, play a pivotal role in cardiovascular diseases. The number, volume and function of platelets vary widely in the healthy population and are highly heritable. Genome-wide association studies have delivered information on common sequence variation in known but also novel genes that control these 3 traits. On the other end of the spectrum of sequence variation, known and hitherto not yet defined ...

Taking the Alain Van Passen comics magazine collection as its starting point, this project shows how comics for very young readers (less than 8 years of age, who are gradually acquiring reading skills) has been established, since 1925, as a growing category in comics publishing, coinciding with investments in children’s material culture, through the novelization, dramatization and animation of comics.

The term ‘manhua’ is broadly viewed as the Chinese equivalent of comics and cartoons, regardless of publication formats. Hong Kong manhua were popular and widely exported between 1950s and the early 1990s, but the industry encountered a drastic decline since the mid-1990s, partially due to the rise of the internet that threatened the print and traditional entertainment media as well as the sterile studio ...

This project aims to investigate contemporary authorship in comics, examining how the concept is understood and focusing on the way comics are created, shared, and read in a digital environment. Comics are an ideal case study because they lie at the intersection of narrative and visual culture, displaying practices, symbolic apparatuses and production structures similar to, or shared by, other media. In particular, I argue that comics after ...

Comics are a powerful means through which American values reached Italy in the 1930s and became part of its culture. With their formative potential influence on younger readers and wide distribution, comics provide a unique line of enquiry for exploring cultural changes, as both a reflection of and a contributor to such changes. My project explores the evolution of Italian comics from the 1930s to the 1960s, focusing on gender discourse and ...

Lately, the assumption that comics are only made for entertainment and lack historical objectivity has tended to be obscured by a new function: historical fiction and nonfiction comics have established themselves as a laboratory for reflection on practices and meanings of historical writing, and have become both a phenomenon and a symbol. A phenomenon, for in France, since the 1990s, historical comics have been reaching a growing readership ...

This thesis deals with the notion of “clear line”, a term coined in 1977 by the essayist and comics author Joost Swarte to describe Hergé’s style, but also that of some artists who can be considered his precursors, and of the creators who followed or parodied his work. It refers both to purely graphic and to intermedial narrative solutions, which work together to produce storytelling strategies that presuppose a deceptively ...

This project aims to analyze representations of individual and collective trauma in comics through a comparative, cross-cultural study. Theories of the implications of comics styles and their interaction with other media are combined with studies on the representation of trauma in private and collective contexts for bringing out the distinctive ways in which comics convey trauma and foster engagement.

This thesis is an investigation into representations of child characters in British comics for children during and after World War II. The exploration focuses on childhood experiences in order to offer an understanding of the nature construction of childhood in comics at the time, and particularly highlight the key elements of depictions of empowered, resilient, inspirational child characters. This research hopes to enrich both ...