Comics & AI: Critical Prompts

Ernesto Priego

Dr Ernesto Priego is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design, and a co-director of the Data, Policy and Society MSc at City St George’s, University of London, and editor and founder of The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship. As a researcher he has explored the role of comics as narrative, conceptual and speculative design tools and applies user-centred, participatory co-design methods to the creation of comics within public health or social interest domains. Ernesto led the “Parables of Care. Responses to Dementia Care” project (2017-2021), which explored the potential of comics to enhance the impact of dementia care research. 

Ernesto’s profile pic by Francisco de la Mora (2023).

Linda Berube

Dr Linda Berube is a Visiting Lecturer in Computer Science at City St. George’s, University of London. She was an AHRC Collaborative Partnership doctoral researcher investigating user interaction with devices, platforms, and digital publications through UK digital comics creation, production, and consumption processes, supported by the British Library and the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design (HCID) at City St. George’s, University of London. She is the author of Do You Web 2.0? Public Libraries and Social Networking (2011). 

Linda’s profile pic by Francisco de la Mora (2023).

Stuart Scott

Stuart Scott is the Manager / UX Lead at The City St George’s Interaction Lab.

Eduardo Alonso

Dr Eduardo Alonso is Professor in Artificial Intelligence and the Chair of the AI Research Committee at City St George’s, University of London. He specializes in agent-based AI (now rebranded as Agentic AI) and in the philosophy of AI, including ethical and legal considerations and the socio-economic impact of both symbolic and connectionist models (now as GenAI and LLMs). He is a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and the university’s academic liaison with the Alan Turing Institute, United Kingdom’s National Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. He is particularly interested in the intersection of AI and creativity and collaborates with AI artists, curators, and gallerists on a regular basis.

Francesca Benatti

Dr Francesca Benatti is Senior Research Fellow at The Open University, where her research interests range from book history to comics to hypertext to nineteenth-century Irish literature and periodicals. She uses digital approaches to study the Humanities and investigate digital cultures, texts and hypertexts through Humanities perspectives. She is the author of Innovations in Digital Comics (2024). 

Peter Wilkins

Dr Peter Wilkins is a Program Manager at Douglas College in Vancouver, where he creates programs for newcomers and youth at risk. He is an editor of The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship and has written about and presented on comics since 2011, including topics such as authorship, adaptation, graphic medicine, and technology. He is interested in comics as a technology of presentation and organization. His current area of investigation is the relationship between comics and the real: surrealism, abstraction, representation, and likeness.

Dom Pates

Dom Pates is a Senior Educational Technologist at City St George’s, where he manages the digital education relationship with three schools – Bayes Business School, The City Law School and the School of Science & Technology. Specialising in learning design, uses of multimedia in teaching and the development of learning spaces, he has more recently started working in immersive learning and sustainability education. Dom is also the founder of a new interdisciplinary module at the university on sustainability and climate change.

Gamini Sethi

Gamini Sethi is a researcher and designer currently pursuing an MSc in Human–Computer Interaction Design at City, University of London. Her work draws from art history, digital humanities, and feminist approaches to technology. She’s interested in how design can hold space for complexity across disciplines and communities, and often works on projects that involve participatory research, information architecture, and platform design in cultural and advocacy settings. 

Monica Visani Scozzi

Monica Visani Scozzi is a PhD student at City St George’s, University of London.
Her research focuses on how to support users interacting with conversational Generative AIs, minimising potential harms and maximising benefits. Monica has previously worked in the IT industry implementing and deploying solutions, with a passion for data and information, helping others get the most out of systems.

Helena Lhyme

Helena Lyhme is a PhD student at HCID. Her research is about eliciting the expertise of autistic people to co-design new financial technologies in alignment with neurodivergent needs and preferences. Helena has previous experience developing digital products in the IT industry. Her academic background is in social anthropology and science and technology studies (STS).

Yuki Pan

Yuki Pan is a creative practitioner and multidisciplinary designer utilising visual and experiential media to investigate the socio-cultural intersections of new technology and geopolitical realities. Drawing from her experience working across design, sustainability, culture and presently, technology, she specialises in identifying connections between the far-reaching implications of domains with past and present social phenomena to actualise community-centred futures https://yuquiche.com/

Reed Puc

Reed Puc is a PhD student at City St George’s, University of London. Their research focuses on superheroes, policing, and urban life. Reed is passionate about abolitionist pedagogy and tabletop games as discursive learning technologies. Reed’s scholarship on Marvel’s The Punisher and queer masculinity has appeared in the Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture.