Health, including mental health, is a cross-disciplinary topic in Nordic school curricula, and the mental health of children and youth is a top priority in the Nordic countries following the increase in mental health problems among young generations.
This requires that teachers in all subjects are capable of meeting and reflecting on health-related questions. Our main goal is to develop new methods and learning designs relevant for teaching practice at secondary and upper secondary levels.
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Comics
Some of the most engaging and provocative Nordic texts about mental health today come in the form of comics. We investigate how such comics can be used in strengthening teacher education programmes ability to offer relevant and high-quality literature education.
We aim at innovation through an interdisciplinary approach to mental health and combine theoretical insights from four fields of research: comics studies, literature education, affect studies, and graphic medicine.
NordComEdu
This project originates from the network Nordic Comics in Education (NordComEdu).
NordComEdu comprises scholars and pedagogues from leading institutions for teacher education in Norway, Sweden, and the Faroe Islands:
- University of South-Eastern Norway (USN)
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
- University of Gothenburg (UGOT)
- University of the Faroe Islands (SETUR)
This project is the first time that scholars of pedagogy, literature didactics and literary studies from USN, NTNU, UGOT and SETUR have initiated a collaboration to address common Nordic challenges.
Activities
We have organized three workshops:
Workshop 1: Mental Health in Nordic Comics and Education Research (6-8 November 2024, University of South-Eastern Norway)
One of the main goals of the workshop was to map out how Norwegian, Swedish and Faroese comics from the last two decades thematize mental health and to review ongoing research about comics, mental health and education. We invited comics artists Anders Kvammen and Anja Dahle Øverbye for a discussion about how they worked with mental health topics in their own comics, met with teacher students who worked on own comics projects, and selected specific comics and themes for developing teaching materials for language and literature teacher training.
Workshop 2 (WS2): User and Expert Perspectives on Nordic Mental Health Comics (3-5 March 2025, University of Gothenburg)
The main goal of the workshop was to expand user and expert perspectives on Nordic mental health comics. We initiated and participated in a comics workshop led by Swedish comics artist Malin Biller to which we also invited teacher students from the University of Gothenburg. We explored first-hand and discussed creative and analytical teaching/learning activities. We also met with Gregg Bucken-Knapp, Professor in public administration at the University of Gothenburg who shared his experience with using zines in the context of migration bureaucracy and with public administration students.
Workshop 3 (WS3): Nordic Mental Health Comics in Teacher Training (11-13 June 2025, Torshavn, The Faroe Islands).
In the third workshop, we deepened out understanding
of the Faroese cultural and education context. We met with visual artists Zacharias Heinesen and Heiðrik á Heygum, who both build on the Faroese cultural heritage and Faroese iconography. We also conducted a seminar with teacher students from the University of the Faroe Islands, where we used a Faroese comic as an entry point into a discussion about comics as a pedagogical resource. We developed learning resources to be integrated in language and literature training, and made a plan for both implementation and future collaboration.
The 35th Conference of the International Association for Scandinavian Studies (IASS)
On August 1, 2025, NordComEdu organized a panel on Nordic Comics and Mental Health at the 35th Conference of the International Association for Scandinavian Studies (IASS) at LMU Munich. We shared insights from the project; thematic, aesthetic, cultural and political aspects identified in our project corpus.
Resources
- The comics selection at the university library at campus Vestfold.
- Short list of graphic literature thematizing mental health from the Faroe Islands, Norway and Sweden
As part of the Nordplus-financed project Nordic Comics and Mental Health: Developing Learning Resources for Teacher Training Programmes, we have developed a short list from the 2010s onward which thematizes mental health. The list comprises original comics in the three Nordic languages in the project, but also picture books from the Faroe Islands, where to date there are few comics originally written in Faroese. It is meant as an inspiration for researchers and educators who are interested in the medium of comics and how it affords important reflections about mental health topics.
