During ComFor’s online members’ meeting on 15 July, 2024, the new managing comittee that had previously been elected via postal vote was confirmed.

Christina Meyer and Lukas R.A. Wilde ran again for the 1st and 2nd chair of the society. Arnold Bärtschi ran for the office of treasurer for the first time. Vanessa Ossa has stepped down from this position, which she held since 2020. During this time, she was not only extremely active as a member of the ComFor online editorial team but also as co-organizer of two ComFor annual conferences, “Comics and Agency – Actors, Publics, Participation” (October 2020, Tübingen) and “What Was, Is, and Will Comics Research Be – for Us?” (December 2023, Gleichen). She was and is also the editor of both freely accessible open access publications (the most recent of which is currently in preparation). We would like to thank Vanessa Ossa very much for her commitment to ComFor and for the important contribution to comics research that she has made through her work!

The new managing comittee consists of:

President

PD Dr. Christina Meyer has been a ComFor member since 2010. She is an American Studies scholar with a research focus on American newspaper comics of the late 19th century. She is currently visiting professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the FU Berlin. In November 2019 her monograph Producing Mass Entertainment: The Serial Life of the Yellow Kid was published by the Ohio State University Press (see publisher’s website), which was nominated for the 2020 Eisner Award in the category “Best Academic/Scholarly Work.” She is co-editor of New Perspectives on American Comic Books and Graphic Novels (a special issue of the journal Amerikastudien / American Studies, 2011) and Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives: Comics at the Crossroads (2013). For more information, please see her ComFor profile page.

Vice President

Associate Prof. Dr. Lukas R.A. Wilde has been a ComFor member since September 2012 and was in charge of the coordination of the ComFor website for many years. In 2018, he first joined the ComFor managing comittee as treasurer, since 2020 as Vice President. He works in the field of media studies where he submitted his Ph.D. thesis on the ‘mangaization’ of public spaces in Japan and the implementation of transmedial figures (kyara) in functional communication (Im Reich der Figuren, Cologne 2018), which was honored with the Roland-Faelske-Award. Since 2022 he is an Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. Moreover, he was co-organizer of two ComFor annual conferences (2020 and 2023) and supports Eve Jay in the organisation of Comic Solidarity (see Website) and is one of the initiators of the German Inclusive Comic Award of the Independent Scene GINCO (see Website). For more information, please see his ComFor profile page.

Treasurer

Dr. Arnold Bärtschi has been a ComFor member since 2020 and was elected to the board as treasurer in 2024. As a classical philologist, he wrote a dissertation on “Titans, Gigants, and Giants in Ancient Epic: A Literary-Theoretical Reinterpretation” (Heidelberg 2019). Since 2019, he has worked as a senior lecturer and executive council member at Ruhr University Bochum. In addition to the application of modern literary theories to ancient literature, his current research focuses on the reception of antiquity in modern media, with a particular focus on comics. Several essays and a monograph are in progress on the question of various transformations of antiquity in comics. More information can be found on his ComFor profile page.

During ComFor’s online members’ meeting on 31 July, 2020, the new managing comittee that had previously been elected via postal vote was confirmed.

The previous comitee members Stephan Packard (president since 2013) and Véronique Sina (vice president since 2018) did not run for another term. We would like to thank both of them for their dedication and the many valuable contributions they have made!

The new managing comittee consists of:

President

Vice President

Dr. Lukas R.A. Wilde has been a ComFor member since September 2012 and was in charge of the coordination of the ComFor website for many years. In 2018, he first joined the ComFor managing comittee as treasurer. He works in the field of media studies at the University of Tuebingen, where he submitted his Ph.D. thesis on the ‘mangaization’ of public spaces in Japan and the implementation of transmedial figures (kyara) in functional communication (Im Reich der Figuren, Cologne 2018), which was honored with the Roland-Faelske-Award. Moreover, he supports Eve Jay in the organisation of Comic Solidarity (see Website) and is one of the initiators of the German Inclusive Comic Award of the Independent Scene GINCO (see Website). Together with Vanessa Ossa and Jan-Noël Thon, he organizes the 15th annual ComFor conference (8-10 Oktober, 2020) on „Comics and Agency“. For more information, please see his ComFor profile page.

Treasurer

Vanessa Ossa has been a ComFor member since 2017, and has been responsible for the website category “Call for Papers” as part of the online editorial team since 2019. Together with Jan-Noël Thon and Lukas R.A. Wilde, she organizes this year’s annual conference “Comics & Agency: Actors, Publics, Participation.” She concluded her doctoral thesis “Sleeping Threats—The Sleeper Agent in Post-9/11 Media” at the collaborative research center “Threatened Order—Societies under Stress” at the university of Tuebingen in 2019. The thesis covers the figure of the ‘sleeper’ in US cinema, serial television, and comic books. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department for Media Culture and Theater at the University of Cologne. Her most recent research interests include comic book fandom and participatory practice as a part of comic book culture. For more information, please see her ComFor profile page.

As of April 27, 2017, ComFor has elected a new Managing Committee for the next two years.

After four and a half years, Dr. Catherine Michel and Dr. Felix Giesa had decided to conclude their tenures. Both our colleagues have supported and contributed to the reform of ComFor, newly founded as a public society in 2014, as well as to the decisive expansion of ComFor’s projects and services during that time. All of ComFor’s members owe them a great debt of gratitude; Stephan Packard, their colleague in the steering committee, would like to extend his special thanks for the productive and friendly work we did together.

The new management includes:

President:

Prof. Dr. Stephan Packard joined ComFor in 2008 and has been its President since its new establishment as a public society in 2012. He organised and edited several of the society’s conferences and publications. He is a founding member of the Committee for Comics Studies at the German Society for Media Studies (GfM) as well as a Consultative Committee Member for the journal European Comic Art. His PhD thesis Anatomie des Comics was published in 2006. Further research interests include transmedia narratology, political uses of comics and other media, and the study of censorship. Packard holds the Professorship for „Popular Culture and Its Theory“ at Cologne University. Read more at his ComFor-profile page.

Vice President:

Dr. Véronique Sina has been a member of ComFor since July 2010. She is a media studies scholar at the University of Cologne and specialises in Gender and Queer Studies, Intersectionality, Intermediality, and Identity Studies. She received her Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees as well as her PhD at Ruhr University Bochum. Her dissertation at the Department of Media Studies was published as Comic – Film – Gender. The (Re-)Mediation of Gender in Comic Book Movies (transcript, 2016). She is Co-Founder of the Committee for Comic Studies (AG Comicforschung) of the German Society for Media Studies (GfM), for which she also serves as Chairwoman and as organizer of numerous workshops and events. For ComFor, she appears in 2018 as a co-organizer of the 13th Annual Conference on comics studies, on „Spaces Between – Gender, Diversity and Identity in Comics“. More information at her ComFor-profile page.

Treasurer:

Dr. Lukas R.A. Wilde has been a member of ComFor since September 2012, and he has been coordinating ComFor’s editorial work online ever since: ComFor’s homepage underwent a major transformation during this time, and ComFor’s online magazine has become a steadily growing contact point and a source of information on conferences, publications, CfPs and other news from our field. In this context, Lukas Wilde also manages ComFor’s mailing list and the online profiles of its members. He is a media studies scholar at the University of Tübingen, where he received his PhD in 2017 through a dissertation on the ‚mangaization‘ of Japanese public spaces and the implementation of transmedial ‚characters‘ (kyara) within functional communication (Im Reich der Figuren, Cologne 2018). Together with Vanessa Ossa and Jan-Noël Thon, he will organize ComFor’s planned 15th Annual Conference in 2020 on „Comic/Mediation: Actors, Participation, and the Public“. Read more at his ComFor-profile page.