My research engages with questions of how the (inter)mediality, materiality, and historical development of comics interact with, critique, and help shape social and political discourse in various linguistic and cultural contexts. My primary focus is on Graphic Medicine, an umbrella term for comics that explore healthcare issues, the theoretical discourse these comics engender, and the study of comics as expressive communicative tools. Coined as “the intersection between the medium of comics and the discourse of healthcare,” Graphic Medicine is concerned with encouraging more individualized healthcare practices through the production and study of comics that reveal the subjective and often ineffable experiences of living with illness, disability, or disorders.
I am currently developing Graphic Medicine within my European Research Council Consolidator Grant, “Where are the Humanities in the Medical Humanities: How Comics Can Improve Healthcare Training, Practice, and Dissemination” (2024-2029) which inquires how, as both a theoretical research field and artistic research practice that produces theory, Graphic Medicine is well suited to examine how the Humanities are currently being used, but are not yet fully integrated, within the Critical Medical and Health Humanities. Focusing on Dutch, French, and English Graphic Medicine produced in The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, my project comparatively analyzes how the discourse and practice travels and shifts across national, cultural, and linguistic contexts in light of various healthcare systems, access, and cultural norms. My project team includes postdoctoral researcher Dr. John Miers, and PhD candidates Tanne Harris-Nijmeijer, Max Eyschen, and Lucie Morel.
Together with comics artist Jan Cleijne, I worked as scenarist to co-produce Ervaringskracht (Experience Power) (Uitgeverij Syndikaat 2025), a graphic medicine comic about experiential expertise in mental healthcare in The Netherlands, commissioned and developed by the GGZ en Samenleving Lectoraat (Mental Healthcare and Society Research Group) at Windesheim University of Applied Science. Also, with Anna Poletti, I co-edited and co-authored Graphic Medicine (University of Hawai‘i Press/Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 2022), a collected volume of original graphic medicine comics and essays that explore the lived experience of illness and disability, which was awarded an Honorable Mention for the "Best Special Issue" category of the 2022 Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) awards and was nominated for an Eisner Award in the category of best Academic/Scholarly Publication.
My other co-edited collected volumes include: Key Terms in Comics Studies (Palgrave Macmillan 2022), "As Slowly as Possible" (ASAP/Journal 2019), “Comics in Art/Art in Comics” (Image [&] Narrative 2016), and Comics and Power: Representing and Questioning Culture, Subjects, and Communities (Cambridge Scholars 2015).
I am also co-founder and co-director of Amsterdam Comics and Graphic Medicine Europe, and serve as a board member of the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis.
