Dr Simon Grennan

Research Interest

Simon has a passionate interest in the ways in which drawn comic strips, the most nineteenth century of media, continue to provide opportunities for scrutinising word and image. Simon trained as a fine artist, establishing an international studio with American artist Christopher Sperandio in 1990, producing hundreds of projects and over forty books to date. He was described a “leading expert” in visual narrative by an Arts and Humanities Research Council UK grant reviewer in 2016.

Latest Achievement

Simon is the author of a new book Thinking Through Drawing: an Accessible Introduction to Ideas and Themes (Bloomsbury 2022). It provides a short illustrated guide to key ideas that are used to describe, understand and explain drawing:

“The book is unique and fresh in its framing of drawing and its history. The writing is direct, accessible, and conceptually driven without resorting to jargon. The author’s fluency and command of ideas from both historic and contemporary moments is impressive.”

Simon is also co-author and editor of Key Terms in Comics Studies (Palgrave 2021). Focussing on Anglophone comics studies, it compiles 361 terms and critical concepts in current use by scholars, with 100 international contributors.

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Last year saw the culmination of a seven-year research project with the publication of Simon’s co-authored book Marie Duval, Maverick Victorian Cartoonist (Manchester University Press 2020), the first comprehensive evaluation of the work of nineteenth-century cartoonist Marie Duval, which reviewers call “a remarkable achievement,” and “as exhaustive and as impressive, an overview as could be conceived.”

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Principle Investigator Simon, Dr Julian Waite, Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts and Professor Roger Sabin of Central Saint Martins, received an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant of almost £200,000, to discover Duval’s extant work and bring it together in a free public image archive (available at www. marieduval.org).

Further Information

See www.simongrennan.com and www.kartoonkings.com