Chichester professor to present a counter-AI comics workshop at the prestigious British Academy Summer Showcase

A professor of cultural and visual history from the University of Chichester will be guiding school leavers to make counter-AI visual stories in a workshop at the British Academy in London. 

The workshop, titled ‘Make the Past and Present Your Comic Story’, is part of the British Academy Summer Showcase 2025 and invites students to create a four-panel comic story using magazines from the Victorian era and present day.  

Hugo Frey, Director of the Institute of Arts and Humanities at the University of Chichester, said: “We will be cutting up bundles of Victorian magazines as well as modern publications, using scissors and glue to get really hands-on. Then we will become counter-AI, generating narratives using these pictures to inspire the human imagination in a way that artificial intelligence can’t. We might end up with a traditional closed story or something very unusual and open ended.”  

The workshop will also look at subjects such as sequence, juxtaposition, and text-image communication. 

Hugo is presenting the workshop in partnership with Professor Simon Grennan (Chester), as part of this year’s British Academy Summer Showcase 2025. The workshop series aims to support school leavers to understand the world of research and to be inspired and encouraged into further university study.  

Hugo added: “It is an honour to be invited to take part in the British Academy Summer Showcase and I am especially pleased that Universities of Chichester and Chester are represented at such a prestigious event where students will be the focus. It is a privilege to have been accepted and I am really looking forward an exciting day.” 

This new work with the British Academy follows on from Hugo’s successful award with Simon of a British Academy Research Conference Grant, and his completion of a number of major research projects (including the books, The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel and The Look of the 1960s [with Jan Baetens]) while it precedes the major international exhibition he is co-curating at the Brussel’s Comics Museum on ‘Visionary Comics’ (September-December 2025).  

For more information, visit www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/summershowcase/summer-showcase-2025-schools-colleges-day.

For information about the humanities courses available at the University of Chichester, go to www.chi.ac.uk/english-and-creative-writing.