Emma Jackson
Biography
Emma is a practice-based PhD researcher using illustration for equity in education. Her LUDeC project will explore the use of comics practice to reimagine the voices that haunt cities and their educational spaces using transdisciplinary methods to work towards decolonised curricula and alternative futures. Emma hopes to work in collaboration with secondary school children using comics to redraw Manchester’s histories and address the legacies of enslavement that impact the lives of students from the Black diaspora in the built environment.
Emma previously studied at Sheffield Hallam University, graduating with a Distinction in her Masters in Design (Illustration). Upon finishing her Masters, Emma was awarded a first Arts Council award to fund Story Drawing Club, a research-led initiative to take workshops into schools across Manchester, London and Sheffield. Emma was awarded a second Arts Council Award to publish the Story Drawing Club Book which was distributed to 1,000 children across Manchester and London. Her PhD at Manchester Metropolitan extends this research into comics and older school-age participants with the hope to have more impacton learner outcomes.
Academic and Professional Qualifications
MA Design (Illustration) (Distinction), Sheffield Hallam University
(Best In Show Award for Illustration, MA Design Exhibition, 2018)
PGCE PCET, University of East London
BA(Hons) Fine Art: painting and printmaking (2:1), Sheffield Hallam University
Research Output
(Forthcoming) Biographical comics of three illustrator/authors as part of Future Proofing Equality in Children’s Publishing Symposium November 2025
‘Three Women’ comics triptych, LUDeC Showcase, 2025
The Story Drawing Book: practice research and book production (Manchester & London);Arts Council Funded (£12,500), 2022
Story Drawing Club project: workshop research, development and delivery (Manchester, Sheffield & London) Arts Council Funded (£8,000, 2019)
Santander Small business start-up award, (£1,200, 2018)
LUDeC Connections
The project will explore transdisciplinary methods using comics workshops in urban secondary schools as an active method for educators to decolonise curricula and design fairer futures for educational spaces. The workshops will provide space for these school children to foreground voices erased by Eurocentric perspectives to bring a more balanced history of the city into educational spaces and to create new narratives about the city that directly involve them. The concept of a more playful city is fulfilled by using playful and creative research methodologies; the co-production of biographical comics narratives canhelp all learners navigate complex and sometimes contentious city histories in an emotionally safer and more relatable way.
The research will consider and provide a creative record of the effects of the neighbourhood and geographies on children, considering the impact that city spaces have on a child’s identity and relationship to education, to take steps towards better future practice that is more inclusive and aware of lived experiences. I hope to connect the work to Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum as they work towards a major project with a planned exhibition in 2027 around the legacies of enslavement and its impact on the city, pertinent to the notion of the liveable city.
Contact Information