International Comic Book Research Conference

Jeffrey A. Brown received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Toronto in 1996. He is a Professor in the Department of Popular Culture and the School of Critical and Cultural Studies at Bowling Green State University. Brown is the author of over 30 academic articles about gender, ethnicity and sexuality in contemporary media, as well as four books: Black Superheroes: Milestone Comics and Their Fans (2000), Dangerous Curves: Gender, Fetishism and the Modern Action Heroine (2011), Beyond Bombshells: The New Action Heroine in Popular Culture
(2015), and The Modern Superhero in Film and Television (2016).

Ana Merino (Madrid 1971) is a lecturer in Creative Writing in Spanish and Cultural Studies at the University of Iowa. In 2011, she founded the MFA (Master in Fine Arts) in Creative Writing in Spanish at that University, which she directed until December 2018. She published ten collections of poems: Preparativos para un viaje (Adonais Prize 1994; Rialp Publishing House 1995, 2^nd edition Reino de Cordelia Publishing House, 2013), Los días gemelos (Visor Publishing House, 1997), La voz de los relojes (Visor Publishing House, 2000), Juegos de niños (Fray Luis de León Prize, Visor Publishing House, 2003), Compañera de Celda (Visor Publishing House 2006), Curación (Visor Publishing House, 2010, Jaime Gil de Biedma Accesit Prize), Los buenos propósitos (Visor Publishing House, 2015), Salvamento de hormigas (Visor Publishing House, 2022); the children’s books Hagamos caso al tigre (Illustrated by Max, Anaya Publishing House, 2010), El viaje del vikingo sonñador (Illustraded by Max, Santillana Publishing House, 2015). She was awarded the 2020 Nadal Prize for her novel El mapa de los afectos (Destino Publishing House, 2022) and she published the novel Amigo (Destino Publishing House, 2022). She is also the author of the juvenile novel El hombre de dos corazones (Anaya Publishing House, 2009) and the album Martina y los piojos (Illustrated by Axier Uzkudun, Riempego Publishing House, 2017) and the plays Amor: muy frágil (Reino de Cordelia Publishing House, 2013), which she directed and premiered in Zurich in 2012, Las decepciones (Literal/Conaculta Publishing House, 2014), La redención (Reino de Cordelia Publishing House, 2016), which she co-directed and premiered in Iowa City in 2017, and the children’s play Salvemos al elefante (Santillana Publishing House, 2017). In addition, she has written several articles on comics, published in scientific journals and academic books: El Cómic Hispánico (Cátedra Publishing House, 2003) and Diez ensayos para pensar el comic (Eolas/Universidad de León, 2017), a critical monograph, Chris Ware: La secuencia circular (Sinsentido Publishing House, 2005) and the Fantagraphics catalogs Creadores del canon (NS, 2003) and Illustrating Spain in the US (Fantagraphics, 2022). She received the Diario de Avisos Award for her short articles on comics in Leer Magazine. She wrote opinion articles for El País and she organized six exhibitions on comics. She has been a member of the Executive Committee of the International Comic Art Forum (ICAF), the Steering Committee of the Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS), the Board of Directors of Iowa City, UNESCO City of Literature, and she is currently a member of the Riverside Theater Executive Board in the city of Iowa.

Jaqueline Berndt is Professor in Japanology at Stockholm University. Previously, she taught Comics Theory at Kyoto Seika University, Japan. Her main academic work is in the areas of Comics/Manga Studies and Animation/Anime studies and engaged in relating New Formalism to Media Studies. It has appeared in Japanese, English, German, and Spanish. She is chairperson of the Open Access series Stockholm Media Arts Japan (Stockholm University Press) and one of the managing editors of the book series Comics Studies: Aesthetics, Histories, Practices (de Gruyter). She has also directed exhibitions, for example, "Manga Hokusai Manga: Approaching the Master’s Compendium from the Perspective of Contemporary Comics" for the Japan Foundation (2016–).

Fernando Castro Flórez (Plasencia, 1964). Professor of Aesthetics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He has written cultural reviews for newspapers such as El País, Diario 16, El independiente, El Sol and El mundo. For the past fifteen years he has worked as an art critic for ABC Cultural. He regularly contributes to publications in magazines such as Revista de Occidente or Descubrir el arte. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. He has been a commissioner of exhibitions of artists such as Miró, Dalí, Cragg, David Nash, Nacho Criado, Warhol, Francis Bacon, Imi Knoebel, Julian

Opie, Fernando Sinaga, Anselm Kiefer, Miquel Navarro or Bernardí Roig. He has written books such as Elogio de la pereza. Notas para una estética del cansancio (1992), El texto íntimo. Kafka, Rile, Pessoa (1992), Contra el bienalismo (2012), Mierda y catástrofe. Síndromes culturales del arte contemporáneo (2014), Estética de la crueldad (2019), Filosofía tuitera y estética columnista (2019) or Cuidado y peligro de sí (2021).