Lecturer in Visual Media and Culture at Abertay University

Co-Founder of Comics Youth SCIO

Hailey is a researcher, teacher and comics creator dedicated to increasing and platforming marginalised voices in the creative industries. Her PhD thesis focused on the ways in which women and other marginalised people are represented in comics and how different genres constrain and punish them for existing in that space.

She teaches students about the importance of creative and cultural industries and teaches students to create their own comics and games with creative and cultural impacts. Her efforts have been celebrated internationally – she is the recipient of the Grant Morrison Prize for Comics Studies, the Scottish Funding Council Saltire Early Career Researcher Prize for Best Community Engagement, and she was one of the first women to write Commando comics in over 30 years. She works tirelessly to promote comics as literature, research, art and historically important artefacts in her local and international community.

Hailey is also an accomplished comics creator having created comics and zines as part of her PhD, creating comics as evaluations for local community-driven organisations, and writing comics for DC Thomson titles like Commando, Oor Wullie, and Wee Harry.

Co-Founder and Art Director of Comics Youth SCIO

Graphic Medicine Project Worker at Comics Youth CIC

Rebecca is a cartoonist, colourist, and youth worker with 9 years experience working with children and young people, families, and community groups. She is fiercely passionate about supporting young people with challenging lived experiences to thrive, and making comics creation accessible for all.

She has worked on over 75 comics publications in a variety of roles covering all aspects of comics production, and she is happiest when using her artistic talents to bring people's stories to life. There is no feeling quite like watching a young person come out of their shell and tell their story, and comics are a vital way to do just that.

Rebecca is also an active member of the Creative Learning Team at The McManus Galleries, and was previously Workshop Lead and Production Lead at Dundee Comics Creative Space. She holds an MDes in Comics & Graphic Novels, a BDes in Animation, and received the Transforming Lives award from The Bridge Alumni Awards at the University of Dundee in 2023.

Co-Founder and Managing Director of Comics Youth CIC

Co-Founder of Comics Youth SCIO

Rhiannon has spent the past 14 years honing her skills in the business, research and the third sector having worked for universities, large charities, and corporates as a business consultant and fundraiser. She Co-founded Comics Youth CIC in 2015 as a direct response and as a means of plugging provision gaps for marginalised young people who fall through the cracks between tier 1-4 services. She fast became an industry leader within the third sector, winning numerous national awards for her innovative practice and Lived Experience Led Leadership. She graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2011 with a Law Degree and from Liverpool John Moores University in 2014 with a Master’s in Public Health Research. Rhiannon is also a founding member of Comics Cultural Impact Collective, an organisation that seeks to raise the profile of comics in the UK and make a case for comics as a participatory art form (sharing best practice on a national level).

She is a School of Social Entrepreneurs Fellow, Royal Fellow for the Society of Public Health, trained Social Accountant, member of the All-Parliamentary Group for Art and Education in addition being a Trustee for numerous charities. She was recently awarded an MBE for her services to young people and the Arts in the Kings’ Birthday Honours List, 2023.

To date, Rhiannon has secured over £20 million worth of funding from a range of trust and grant foundations, corporates, and charitable giving ventures.

She has always adored books and comics and is passionate about the role and significance of literacy for people of all ages, but particularly so for marginalised youth, and has worked with teaching fellows to design comics focused literacy curriculums.

She is a strong advocate that comics are powerful tools that can be used as windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows can also become sliding doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become a part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. We must never forget than when the lighting conditions are just right, that a window can also become a mirror. Literature can give us the power to transform our lived experiences as part of a larger experience - something more! Comics can become a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books! She believes with all her heart that for society to work, we need to support the most marginalised voices to be seen and heard. Literacy is the key to do this. That marginalised groups should have access to Comics. In her private life she is an adoptive Mum and a mean jigsaw enthusiast.

Lecturer in Communication Design at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee

Trustee at Comics Youth SCIO

Damon is an artist, educator, researcher, and comics maker with a PhD in Autobiographical Comics. His main research area is life narratives told in comics, with a particular interest in British comics, and the games authors play with truth.

He is the founder and organiser of DeeCAP (Dundee Comics / Art / Performance), which began in 2013 to create a communal comics reading experience that involves elements of theatre and performance. He is a member of the Scottish Centre for Comics Studies at University of Dundee and an associate member of CoRH! - The Comics Research Hub at University of the Arts London. He is Creative Submissions Editor of Studies in Comics journal.

From 2015-2020 he was the Co-ordinator of Dundee Comics Creative Space (DCCS), a social enterprise and studio project developed by the University of Dundee in collaboration with the Rank Foundation and the Dundee Place Partnership Scheme. DCCS provided educational comics workshops for young people aged between 10-17 to encourage creative learning through comics. DCCS also housed Ink Pot, a comics studio providing work space to recent comics graduates.