Dr Ian Hague

Biography

Dr Ian Hague is the Associate Dean of Research and Reader in Graphic Narrative at London College of Communication, UAL. His research looks at sensory and material cultures, with a particular focus on comics and related forms.

Ian is the author of Comics and the Senses: A Multisensory Approach to Comics and Graphic Novels (Routledge, 2014), The Materiality of Digital Comics (Palgrave, forthcoming), and many shorter works. Ian’s research in Comics and the Senses was credited with ‘[developing] a framework of wide significance for all of the Humanities’ in a review in Visual Studies. He is the co-editor of Representing Multiculturalism in Comics and Graphic Novels (Routledge, 2015) and two volumes on Violence in Comics (Routledge, 2020). Ian submitted multiple outputs to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 and was included in UAL's REF Impact Case Study on Comics Studies.

In 2009, Ian founded Comics Forum, an annual conference series and website that brings together international researchers at all career stages as part of the Thought Bubble Sequential Art Festival, working with partners including Leeds Central Library and the Henry Moore Institute. Ian is also a founding member of UAL’s Comics Research Hub, which connects comics researchers across the university and leverages the university’s archives and special collections to support research activity.

An active research leader, Ian was LCC’s Design School Research Coordinator from 2020, before becoming Associate Dean of Research in 2024. In this role he sits on several college and university committees, feeding into policy development across a range of areas and contributing to the university’s REF submission. Ian has previously worked in leadership roles in Contextual and Theoretical Studies (2017-23), supporting a team of around twenty staff members through challenging periods including the Covid-19 pandemic, through the development of productive, sustainable infrastructure and initiatives. The impact of his work in this role was recognised in his being awarded Senior Fellow of Advance HE in 2020. Ian’s work on Comics Forum has also contributed to the development of the field both by connecting academic research to cultural organisations, and by providing development and mentoring opportunities for academics at various stages of their careers.

Ian is supervising several PhDs and is regularly asked to act as a PhD examiner. With Professor Roger Sabin, Ian successfully applied for a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with the British Library (BL) to look at how the library collects digital comics. The studentship is currently underway, with Ian and Roger acting as co-supervisors with colleagues from the BL. Ian sits on the editorial boards of his discipline’s leading journals: Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (Routledge) and Studies in Comics (Intellect), and regularly peer reviews for other journals and book publishers in the field.

Ian is open to enquiries for collaborative research, contract research and academic consultancy. He is not currently accepting new PhD students but expects to have capacity to do so from September 2027.