Dr John Miers

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John Miers
About
Teaching and learning
Research

About

I am a cartoonist, illustrator, teacher and researcher. My primary interest is in narrative illustration, particularly sequential forms such as comics. My comics work is represented in Tate Publishing's survey of the artform Comics Art, and I have been invited to present it at events across the UK and in Amsterdam and Chicago. My wider practice spans a variety of contexts including branding and promotional design and illustration in the editorial and publishing sectors, including work for The Guardian, Reader's Digest, The Idler, Foyles, Paragraph Publishing and Centaur Media. 

My research has been published in British and European peer-reviewed journals and volumes. I am an active member of the comics studies community. I sit on the organising committee of the Transitions symposium (Birkbeck, University of London) and am a founder member of the UAL Comics Research Hub (CorH!).

In addition to my primary role as senior lecturer in illustration at KSA, I am a visiting lecturer at University of the Arts London and the Royal College of Art, and external examiner for BA Cartoon and Comic Art at Staffordshire University and BA Comics and Graphic Novels at Teesside University

With Maggie Gray and Nick White, I co-run the Kingston School of Art Comic Club.

Academic responsibilities

Senior Lecturer in Illustration and Critical and Historical Studies

Qualifications

  • 2011-2018: PhD Graphic Communication, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London
  • 2003-4: Postgraduate Diploma Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London
  • 1997-2001: BA Fine Art, Slade School of Fine Art, University College London

Teaching and learning

Qualifications and expertise

  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, November 2020
  • Best Postgraduate Teacher, Union of Kingston Students Academic Impact Awards 2020
  • 2003-4: Certificate in post-compulsory education, University of Westminster

Undergraduate courses taught

Postgraduate courses taught

Research

My approach to the creation and analysis of graphic communication is guided by my interest is how drawing style creates narrative meanings by guiding audiences' expectations regarding genre, mood and character. I explored this from a theoretical perspective in my PhD (Visual Metaphor and Drawn Narratives, Central Saint Martins, 2017), which developed a synthesis between philosophical understandings of depiction and visual metaphor.

More recently I have applied this approach in the field of Graphic Medicine: my Researcher in the Archives residency at London College of Communication resulted in the production of an autobiographical comic book in which I adopted the styles of other artists in order to express and process aspects of living with multiple sclerosis. This publication is now held in the Wellcome Collection, the UK's leading institution exploring the connections between art and health, and was named as "Best One-Shot" in the 2020 Broken Frontier awards. I have continued to publish new autobiographical comics drawing on the archival research conducted during the residency, as well as broadening the scope of this work in comics that explore the contribution graphic medicine can make to disability studies and public health discourse.

I am a passionate advocate of creative practice as a research method and form of dissemination; my most recent peer-reviewed articles have been in comics form, and my most recent written outputs include original drawings created as demonstrations of their theoretical arguments.

I welcome applications for PhD or MA by Research study in comics studies, metaphor studies, illustration history, practice and theory, and the intersection of healthcare with visual arts and design.

Research student supervision

Publications

Jump to: Article | Book Section | Conference or Workshop Item
Number of items: 17.

Article

, Chessum, Thierry and Davies, Paul F. (2022) Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 13(1), pp. 110-127. ISSN (print) 2150-4857

(2021) Biography, ISSN (print) 0162-4962 (In Press)

Wysocki, Lydia, Jackson, Mark, , Webster, Jane and Coxon, Brittany (2019) International Journal of Heritage Studies, ISSN (print) 1352-7258

(2015) Studies in Comics, 6(1), pp. 145-156. ISSN (print) 2040-3232

Book Section

(2022) In: La Cour, Erin , Grennan, Simon and Spanjers, Rik, (eds.) Key terms in comics studies. Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 190-191. (Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels) ISSN (print) 2634-6370 ISBN 9783030749736

(2022) In: La Cour, Erin , Grennan, Simon and Spanjers, Rik, (eds.) Key terms in comics studies. Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 192-192. (Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels) ISSN (print) 2634-6370 ISBN 9783030749736

(2022) In: La Cour, Erin , Grennan, Simon and Spanjers, Rik, (eds.) Key terms in comics studies. Cham. Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 196-197. (Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels) ISSN (print) 2634-6370 ISBN 9783030749736

(2022) In: Gray, Maggie and Horton, Ian, (eds.) Seeing comics through art history : alternative approaches to the form. Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 75-95. (Palgrave studies in comics and graphic novels) ISSN (print) 2634-6370 ISBN 9783030935061

(2022) In: La Cour, Erin , Grennan, Simon and Spanjers, Rik, (eds.) Key terms in comics studies. Cham. Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 274-275. (Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels) ISSN (print) 2634-6370 ISBN 9783030749736

Harrington, Bill, Rumeu, Jaume [Artist], Round, Julia [Writer of accompanying material], D'Arcy, Geraint [Writer of accompanying material], [Writer of accompanying material], Horton, Ian [Writer of accompanying material] and Pursall, Dona [Writer of accompanying material] (2021) In: ., ., (ed.) Misty Presents : the Jaume Rumeu Collection. Oxford, U.K. : Rebellion. pp. 120-122. (Misty, (5)) ISBN 9781781089378

(2019) In: Mickwitz, Nina , Horton, Ian and Hague, Ian, (eds.) Representing Acts of Violence in Comics. Abingdon, U.K. and New York, U.S. : Routledge. pp. 19-34. ISBN 9781138484535

(2017) In: de Assis, Paulo and Giudici, Paolo, (eds.) The dark precursor : Deleuze and artistic research. Leuven, Belgium : Leuven University Press. pp. 375-385. 2 ISBN 9789462701182

and Grennan, Simon (2015) In: Grennan, Simon and Grove, Lawrence, (eds.) Transforming Anthony Trollope. Leuven, Belgium : Leuven University Press. pp. 33-54. ISBN 9789462700413

Conference or Workshop Item

, Sturdee, Miriam, , Davis, Josh Urban and Hoang, Thuong (2022) In: CHI 2022: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems; 30 Apr - 05 May 2022, New Orleans, U.S.. (Unpublished)

Sturdee, Miriam, , Gamboa, Mafalda, Hoang, Thuong N., , 艩morgun, Ilja, Jain, Pranjal, Strohmayer, Angelika, Alaoui, Sarah Fdili and Wodtke, Christina R. (2022) In: CHI 2022: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems; 30 Apr - 05 May 2022, New Orleans, U.S.. (Unpublished)

Horton, Ian and (2021) In: Bandes dessin茅es hors-champs = Comics on the Outside; 2 - 4 Jun 2021, Universit茅 libre de Bruxelles (held online). (Unpublished)

(2018) In: Drawing Yourself In and Out of It : The 2nd International Amsterdam Comics Conference; 15 - 17 Nov 2018, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. (Unpublished)

This list was generated on Sun May 19 07:09:49 2024 BST.

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