Content - Board with bios — Graphic Medicine Europe

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

ERIN LA COUR
CO-CHAIR
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Associate Professor

Erin La Cour is Associate Professor in English Literature and Visual Culture at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and co-founder and co-director of Amsterdam Comics. Her research focuses on the intermediality and mediality of comics and on the theory and practice of graphic medicine. She has co-edited four comics studies collections, including Key Terms in Comics Studies (Palgrave 2022) and the Council of Editors of Learned Journals and Eisner Award nominated “Graphic Medicine” (Biography 2022). She is co-author of the comics Ervaringskracht (produced with Jan Cleijne, Syndikaat 2025) and Why Graphic Medicine? (produced with John Miers, Vrije University Press 2026). From 2020-2021 she was a Comenius Fellow of The Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO), for which she conducted the project “Opening a Dialogue about Mental Health through Comics and Creative Writing” and from 2024-2029 she will lead her European Research Council Consolidator Grant project on Graphic Medicine, entitled “Where are the Humanities in the Medical Humanities? How Comics Can Improve Healthcare Training, Practice, and Dissemination.”

ANA PATRÍCIA HILÁRIO
BOARD MEMBER
Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa
Assistant Professor

Ana Patrícia Hilário is a Medical Sociologist whose work lies at the intersection of the Sociology of Health and Public Health. She is a Research Fellow and Coordinator of the LIFE Research Group at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, and an Assistant Professor in the PhD Programme OpenSoc at the same institution. She is a member of the CHARM Network and of the Task Force on LGBT+ Inclusive Palliative and End-of-Life Care of the European Association for Palliative Care. Dr. Hilário serves on the editorial boards of Sociology of Health & Illness and Análise Social, and she is currently Co-Coordinator of the Research Network on Sociology of Health and Medicine of the European Sociological Association. Her research focuses on children and adults living with life-threatening and life-limiting illnesses, public health emergencies, particularly vaccine hesitancy and antimicrobial resistance, and qualitative methodologies, including ethnography, visual, and participatory methods.

OCTAVIA ROODT
BOARD MEMBER
KU Leuven & LUCA School of Arts
PhD candidate & Artist

ESZTER SZEP
BOARD MEMBER
Aalto University
Postdoc & Artist

IAN WILLIAMS BOARD MEMBER
Physician & Artist