The new issue of the University of Adelaide’s magazine has a spotlight on my research! You can read the article online. The writer did a great job of summarising what turned into a long and rambling interview (conducted over the phone while my new son slept in my arms!) with me into something coherent and enjoyable to read.
I also drew an illustration for the article, which the magazine sent over a camera crew to film me drawing! I’d never drawn on camera before, so it was a bit nerve-wracking, but the end result was a nice suite of multimodal texts: the article, my drawing, and a short video. Taken together, they give a pretty good glimpse into where I’m at in this stage of my thesis. The video also shows the action-packed process of drawing with a pen in a beige cubical, backed by some pleasant ukulele music and whistling.
I agonised over the drawing and tried a couple of new things in terms of the colouring. If I hadn’t been being filmed, I probably would have gone back and forth and messed with it a lot more. That’s the power of video surveillance, I guess! I initially sketched a layout for a full page comic that would serve as kind of an outline for my thesis, but the Adelaidean editors asked me to condense all that down to a single panel or two.
My roughly sketched draft of that full-page is below the cut. You might find it interesting if you’re curious about my creative process or the general thrust of my thesis argument. The text of the Adelaidean profile also follows.