Dr Gareth Brookes
Faculties, departments and locations
- Kingston School of Art
- Department of Illustration Animation
- Design, Arts and Creative Practice
Lecturer in Illustration
- Email:
- [email protected]
About
I am a graphic novelist and researcher. I have published four graphic novels, the most recent being The Dancing Plague (2021) and The Compleat Angler (2025) both published by SelfMadeHero. I use unusual material approaches in my work, including embroidery, pyrography, various forms of printmaking, and pressed flowers. In my academic work I employ a practice-based approach to explore ideas of embodiment and trace, and consider how technology affects our engagement with materials.
Alongside Maggie Gray, Nick White, John Miers and Isabel Greenberg I help run the Kingston School of Art Comic Club.
Qualifications
- PhD in Comics Studies from Central Saint Martins, UAL
- MA (RCA) in Printmaking
- BA (Hons) Fine Art, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Domains
Qualifications
- Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy AFHEA
Courses taught
My research looks at imaginative engagement with tactile surfaces in comics. My monograph Reading Comics Through the Body argues that haptic surfaces in visual narratives should be considered a register of meaning, and seeks to establish that material relationships in the networked narratives of comics can be part of their narratological structure. I am interested in how these embodied material relationships are affected by different kinds of technological remediation.
In 2025 I undertook a research fellowship at Merton College, Oxford University, making visual narratives responding to the archives of the 19th Century poet Michael Field.
I serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics.
Publications
Books
Articles
- Truth claims and trace: The autographic witness in the algorithm, Memory, Mind & Media Journal Vol 4 - Special Collection - Comics, Memory, Activism. Open Access: DOI
- Materiality and metalepsis in handmade small press alternative comics, Studies in Comics 14.2, DOI
- Stylistic co-existence and the chronotope in Stone Fruit and onwards towards our noble deaths, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, DOI
- Dwelling with Traumatic Memory through Embodied Drawing in the Structure of Graphic Novels - MHRA WORKING PAPERS IN THE HUMANITIES 17 On Forgetting - December 2022
Specialisms
- Small press, underground, and DIY comics and zines
- Practice-based research in visual narratives
- Technology, embodiment, and the effects of GenAI
- Materiality and comics
- Drawing theory and archives