New Graphic Novel Communicates Sustainability in a Creative Way
Freiburg, 20/12/2024
Addressing new audiences involves exploring new avenues: This insight motivated five members of the first generation at the Young Academy for Sustainability Research (YAS) to convey their research findings to teenagers in a graphic novel.
How can interdisciplinary scientific findings from sustainability research be communicated to young people? This is the core question Dr Sarah May, Lea Breitsprecher, Dr Ida Wallin, Dr Cristina Espinosa, Dr Matthias Kranke, and Dr Javier Francisco dealt with in their project ‘Graphic Novel “Welt im Wandel – Fünf Stories zur Umweltkrise“‘ (Graphic novel ‘World in transition – five stories about the environmental crisis’), which they conducted in the first cohort of the interdisciplinary Young Academy for Sustainability Research (YAS). ‘Our goal was to address pupils between the ages of 13 and 16 and to make it easier for them to grasp various aspects of sustainability’, says May, an interim professor at the University of Freiburg’s Institute for Cultural Analysis/European Ethnology. The interdisciplinary and international team explored a new avenue in science communication to achieve this goal: ‘As researchers, we often strive to publish our results as articles in renowned journals. In view of the requirements of our target audience, we knew that this would be no option for us. To reach the teenagers, we therefore decided early on in the process to convey the content of our research at the visual and textual level through stories.’
Five stories – five perspectives
The result is a graphic novel of just under 50 pages in length with five stories told from the perspective of young people. Each chapter was written by a different member of the team, so the novel covers socioecological topics as well as forest policy, history, cultural studies, and political science topics. Despite their broad disciplinary scope, the stories tie in with each other and outline how consumer behaviour, loss of biodiversity, and climate change are interrelated on different continents and over the course of centuries: Whereas the first story is set in the Caribbean in the 1660s and takes up the consequences of colonial power structures, chapters two to four are devoted to current challenges – pollution in the form of plastic waste in Australia, climate change and heat records in Germany, and the destruction of biodiversity in Ecuador. In the concluding chapter, the graphic novel transports its readers to the Germany and Ghana of the year 2150. There they experience how the future could develop from the perspective of the authors. ‘Without wanting to be naive, we found it important to end on a positive note and inspire the pupils to believe in the good and in our ability to achieve change together’, emphasizes May.
„Our goal was to address pupils between the ages of 13 and 16 and to make it easier for them to grasp various aspects of sustainability.“
PD Dr Sarah May
Institute for Cultural Analysis/European Ethnology, University of Freiburg
How do teenagers talk?
The implementation process was as enriching for the team as it was challenging in various respects, says the scientist. As an example, she cites the challenge of finding the right words for a non-academic target audience: ‘On the one hand, it was clear to us that we shouldn’t use any specialist terms in addressing the pupils, and on the other hand we were confronted with the question: How do teenagers talk?’ The group received support on this point from the Berlin agency Ellery Studio, which was also responsible for the graphic novel’s design. May says of the cooperation, which was entirely digital: ‘We sent the agency our chapters, each of which had a different concept – some more scientific, some as a theatre script. The agency drew up sketches based on our texts. Then it was up to us to investigate and determine whether the representations were scientifically correct or whether the portrayals of humans and power structures were too stereotypical.’ What sounds like a lot of coordination and a lively back and forth helped the work to evolve.
The project team presented the graphic novel to the public at the start of December. In the coming year, the scientists aim to initiate joint projects with schools. ‘We would like to present the graphic novel at the appropriate grade levels and engage the pupils in a conversation about sustainability topics’, explains May.
Young Academy for Sustainability Research (Hrsg.): Welt im Wandel. Fünf Stories zur Umweltkrise. Waxmann.
About the Young Academy for Sustainability Research (YAS)
The Young Academy for Sustainability Research (YAS) was established in 2021 at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS). Its members are postdoctoral researchers from a wide variety of disciplines who work together on research projects and publications in the field of sustainability research and also organize scientific conferences and workshops. The young academy is administered by its members. The FRIAS team supports them in organizational and administrative matters. The members meet several times a year in Freiburg. The Young Academy is funded by the Eva Mayr-Stihl Foundation, which has granted a second funding period until 2027. The aim is to foster scientific discourse among outstanding young researchers, particularly interdisciplinary discourse, as well as to promote initiatives at the interfaces between science and society in the field of sustainability.