IN-PERSON MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY. SECTION A
Abstract
This comics-based research field report investigates the experiences of disadvantaged primary students in the North-East of England as they learn how to make comics in the classroom. Research since the 1940s consistently finds connections between student engagement with curriculum and reading comics. However, explorations into the ways making comics impact young people in the North-East are rare; this might be because most education professionals can read comics, but they can’t necessarily make comics. Therefore, the objective of Cartooning in the Classroom is to demonstrate to students and their teachers ways to make comics. Through a qualitative analysis of field notes, observations, original art, and feedback forms, the project aims to illuminate the potential of comics in empowering marginalised learners. Graphic memoir, which is understood to be a genre of autobiographical comics, is applied as a research methodology and findings output. Over the course of six cartooning workshops, participants studied Romeo and Juliet by creating cartoon characters based on the characters in Shakespeare’s play. Grounded in making comics, collaborative practice, and critical pedagogy, a graphic memoir methodology is applied in the analysis of data. Graphic memoir as a knowledge co-creation research methodology can result in rich analysis that delves beyond surface perceptions by mining the participants’, their teachers’, and the researcher’s lived experiences to find meaning. The findings are output in the form of an academic comic, whereby qualitative methods explore the lived realities, challenges, and aspirations of disadvantaged primary school students as they navigate the creative process of visual storytelling.
Dr Julian Lawrence is a Senior Lecturer in Comics and Graphic Novels at Teesside University, specialising in comics-based research. Dr Lawrence has 40 years combined experience as a comics artist, researcher, and teacher with a BA in Media Studies from Emily Carr University, an MA in Art Education from the University of British Columbia, and a PhD in Art and Design from Teesside University. As a professional comics artist, he has worked for Fantagraphics, Cartoon Network, the NFB, and others. He is currently writing a book about making comics and collaborative practice, published by Palgrave.
Roderick Murray trained as an illustrator at Leeds Metropolitan University and worked as a freelance cartoonist for several years before gradually moving into a career in teaching where he has worked in the secondary sector, Higher Education and tertiary education before retraining to be a primary school teacher in 2018. He still has ambitions to work for DC Comics before he retires!
5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Wednesday 24th June, 2026