Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Pathophysiological characterization of megakaryopoiesis and platelet production: omics for thrombocytopenia and functional studies." "Kathleen Freson" "Centre for Molecular and Vascular Biology" "Platelets, the 2nd most abundant cell in the blood, play a pivotal role in cardiovascular diseases. The number, volume and function of platelets vary widely in the healthy population and are highly heritable. Genome-wide association studies have delivered information on common sequence variation in known but also novel genes that control these 3 traits. On the other end of the spectrum of sequence variation, known and hitherto not yet defined “very rare variants” cause aberrant platelet phenotypes that are associated with bleeding. By studying the etiology, molecular biology and pathophysiology of inherited platelet disorders (IPDs), DNA variants, genes and pathways will be discovered that place pointers at new regulators of the formation, function and survival of platelets. This project will specifically focus on IPDs with defects in megakaryopoiesis and/or platelet formation (thrombocytopenia). With the advent of next generation sequencing it is now possible and affordable to discover a large fraction of the causative variants not yet defined and this technique will be used to exome sequence 35 unrelated patients with thrombocytopenia for which known causes have been excluded. System biology approaches are next essential to study the exact role of these novel candidates and some other known regulators with a yet however undefined function (as for exon junction complex member Y14) during megakaryopoiesis. For that purpose, we will use functional genetics in zebrafish and in vitro megakaryocyte differentiation assays starting from peripheral blood-derived hematopoietic stem cells or inducible pluripotent stem cells obtained from patients’ fibroblasts. This study is expected to gain important insights in the poorly understood and complex process of megakaryopoiesis for also improved diagnosis and treatment of IPDs." "Hong Kong independent comics" "Jan Baetens" "Cultural Studies Research Group" "The term ‘manhua’ is broadly viewed as the Chinese equivalent of comics and cartoons, regardless of publication formats. Hong Kong manhua were popular and widely exported between 1950s and the early 1990s, but the industry encountered a drastic decline since the mid-1990s, partially due to the rise of the internet that threatened the print and traditional entertainment media as well as the sterile studio production of manhua that failed to catch up with the evolving media landscape and address the changing taste of readers. The disappearing Hong Kong manhua echoes with Abbas Ackbar’s (1997) claim that Hong Kong is characterised by the culture and politics of disappearance. Also in the 1990s, there was an emergence of independent comics, synonymous to alternative comics, that emphasised sole authorship, aesthetics and themes that are in dichotomy with the studio-produced manhua. Though independent manhua are usually market failures, they gradually changed the stigma manhua and became mainstream mode of manhua production in the 2000s. This dissertation explores Hong Kong manhua produced since 2000 using a multidimensional analytical approach in the interconnected fields of comic, media, and cultural studies. Divided into two parts, the first part adopts a historical approach to map Hong Kong manhua within its local socio-cultural history and the transnational comic industries. The second part zooms into the close reading of a culturally significant independent comic corpus that is further divided into three chapters according to the themes and publication formats. The corpus shows links between 1) nostalgia and memories though the graphic memoirs about childhood in the urban environment that has been demolished and redeveloped, 2) transmedial and transcultural influence on serial comic strips that combine fictional stories with socio-political commentary, and 3) digital manhua and new modes of comic production, circulation and consumption on the social media. Building on the multidimensional discourses of disappearance, this dissertation posits that the post-2000 manhua have reinvented the manhua medium and resisted cultural oblivion and disappearance. To do so, there is a thematic turn to narrate Hong Kong as the central theme of comics; a transmedial turn by expanding the manhua medium in other transmedial forms; and an emphasis of manhua as part of the transcultural circulation of comics by mixing transcultural and local elements in comics.  " "The networked author: rethinking contemporary authorship through comics after the digital turn" "Maaheen Ahmed" "Department of Literary Studies" "This project aims to investigate contemporary authorship in comics, examining how the concept is understood and focusing on the way comics are created, shared, and read in a digital environment. Comics are an ideal case study because they lie at the intersection of narrative and visual culture, displaying practices, symbolic apparatuses and production structures similar to, or shared by, other media. In particular, I argue that comics after the digital turn offer a test case for observing many recent dynamics that extend and problematize the broader concept of authorship. Through the overarching critical frameworks of media archeology and actor-network theory, the project will frame authorship to reconstruct the intertwined practices involving the production and reception of comics by a constellation of human and nonhuman actors, the structures that they configure, and the symbolic meaning that they entail. By shaping a novel systematization and combining different theoretical frameworks, it will investigate how the digital has brought to the fore novel network dynamics of comics production that go beyond the single author, related not only to renewed forms and practices of collective authorship, but also to new configurations of distributed authorship. Although these structures have been partly examined in relation to other medial traditions, comics provide new and diverse examples that help complexify and reframe the broader critical reflection." "Conjuring Phantoms: A Comparative Study of Trauma in Comics" "Stef Craps" "Department of Literary Studies" "This project aims to analyze representations of individual and collective trauma in comics through a comparative, cross-cultural study. Theories of the implications of comics styles and their interaction with other media are combined with studies on the representation of trauma in private and collective contexts for bringing out the distinctive ways in which comics convey trauma and foster engagement." "REDRAWING CHILDHOOD" "Roel Vande Winkel" "Institute for Media Studies, Associated Faculty of the Arts, Image Research Unit, Ghent Campus" "“REDRAWING CHILDHOOD” aims at exploring the construction of childhood in comics and finding new ways of storytelling regarding that life period. It will challenge contemporary ideas of childhood and its representations. Discoveries in related fields will be used for improving the medium of comics. Artists such as Katin, Matthey, Spiegelman and Matsumoto will be the key to study the construction of childhood in graphic narratives. Experimental practices that are promoted by The ChiFouMi Association and their projects will be essential for finding new ways to work within the field. The outcome will be graphic novels about childhood in war-torn Serbia, as it is the social situation I experienced in my childhood. Next to the book, the outcome will be a series of experimental comics that I will use to search for appropriate ways to tell my story, reflecting on theoretical insights. These experiments will be reflected upon in accompanying essays." "Comic Modernism: The Reception of Aristophanes in British Poetry, Fiction, and Criticism, 1900-1940" "Sascha Bru" "Cultural Studies Research Group, Associated Faculty of the Arts" "This research project aims to examine the presence and effect of ancient Greek comedy in British modernist literary culture. The dominant view of modernist literature as a profoundly serious endeavor has so far prevented a sustained study of the status of comedy in modernism’s literary legacy. By focusing on the reception of Aristophanic comedy, this project proposes an untrodden path into this field. It uncovers the keen interest modernist writers displayed towards this body of classical material that has never received systematic attention within the study of modernism. Starting from a corpus of poetic, fictional, and critical texts that combines highly canonized with (relatively) neglected writers, it aims to elucidate the various functions ancient Greek comedy was made to perform in modernism by analyzing the writers’ unambiguous borrowings from Aristophanes on the level of textual genres, thematic concerns, and metaliterary debates. Built on the steady methodological ground of Classical Reception Studies, the study of the reception of one classical writer in a range of writers from the same historical period is also meant to contribute new theoretical insight into literary reception itself, and to place a step toward a broader consideration of classical reception in the modernist period." "Medium and culture at Play: Creative Collaboration in the Contemporary Belgian Graphic Novel" "Anneleen Masschelein" "Cultural Studies Research Group" "This project is based on the observation of an increase in the publication of collaboratively created graphic novels in the contemporary Flemish graphic novel and its Walloon counterpart as well as the fact that the graphic novels in question have strong ties to the cultural industries. This observation is interesting from a double point of view. Firstly, it suggest a parallel medial dynamic between the Flemish graphic novel and the Walloon graphic novel that makes it possible to study these productions together for the first time. The observation in question runs counter to contemporary modes of creation in the American and French graphic novel, where collaboratively created graphic novels are rare. Whereas the United States and France have a national comics industry, this is not the case in Belgium. This project hypothesizes that the absence of a comics industry proper to Belgium lies at the basis of the observed convergence and divergence and that it is related to the second point of interest of its starting observation: the inclusion of the Belgian graphic novel in the cultural industries. The cultural industries question the dichotomy between industry and art. Given the fact that the defining characteristic of the graphic novel medium is the play which it performs with the conventions of the industrial comic book, this project asks the question how and why the Belgian graphic novel functions in a cultural system that performs at least part of this characteristic." "Reanimating Morgue Files. A Media Archeology of Reference Picture Collections" "Benoît Crucifix" "Cultural Studies Research Group, Universiteit Gent" "This research project examines the specific case of morgue files: picture collections composed of photographs, clippings and visual printed ephemera often organized and stored in cabinets, and used as reference aid for drawing comics and cartoons. Ubiquitous in publishers offices and artist studios during most of the twentieth century, morgues have been a central aspect of cartoonists’ creative process for decades before online image databases rendered them obsolete. Morgue files remain a forgotten cultural practice, understudied in analyses of comics and cartoon production. This project aims to study morgue files as a useful theoretical gateway, connecting comics studies with the fields of media archaeology, information science, and knowledge organization. By looking at how different cartoonists used morgue files, we will gain insight into how these collections are organized, used, transmitted, and preserved in the field of graphic narratives, allowing us to identify and better understand image-making practices in the context of early industrialization and fast commodification. Since morgues are delicate and difficult to store, and guidelines for their conservation are non-existent, we will also make a case to develop tools for their future preservation." "The comic as a literary genre." "Jan Baetens" "Cultural Studies Research Group" "Met de intrede van het stripverhaal in het literaire veld, wordt een vernieuwing van de bestaande narratologische instrumentarium wenselijk. Indit project zal de spanning tussen plaatjes met tekst en plaatjes zonder tekst op het niveau van het afzonderlijke beeldverhaal aangegrepen worden om een bredere reflectie op te zetten over de narratologie van het beeldverhaal als medium. De problematiek van de wisselende relatie tussenvertellen en beschrijven speelt hierbij een essentiële rol, net alshet herdefiniëren van de voornaamste narratologische functies en het integreren van een diepgaande studie van de relatie tussen stripverhaal endrager." "Sketch That Story and Make It Popular. Using Graphic Narratives in Feminist Activism Against Gender-Based-Violence" "Inge Lanslots" "Translation and Intercultural Transfer, Antwerp Campus" "With the new millennium, gender-based violence (GBV) has entered Italian mainstream discourse. Notwithstanding the visibility achieved, activists have denounced the simplification of feminist stances against GBV promoted by mainstream media. These have been accused of re-objectifying the victims, justifying perpetrators and confirming stereotypes. As a result of a growing awareness of the risks connected to the popularisation of the GBV debate, artists and activists have started to challenge the simplification of media discourse by proposing representations of GBV through graphic narratives (graphic novels and comics).  As scholars have pointed out, the combination of text and image can convey complex narrative structures and ideas while being accessible to a wide audience, as demonstrated by the increasing relevance assigned to graphic narratives both in academic research and among readers. Looking at Italian graphic novels in their traditional format as well as at the use of comics and vignettes in awareness-raising campaigns, this project investigates the role that graphic narratives play in Italian feminist activism against GBV. Are they able to offer an ethical representation while remaining popular? How do they enhance the reader’s identification? How do they interact with other media (literature, tv series, board-games etc.) in order to propose representations of GBV that overcome the limits of the single narrative engaging the reader in a much broader experience? "