I was contacted by Dr. Gemma Sou a few months ago.
On 20 September 2017, the ‘biggest storm in Caribbean history’ Hurricane Maria struck the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico causing over US$30 billion in damage. But what happened after the storm passed? How did the people recover and what were the long-term and hidden impacts?
For one year, Dr Gemma Sou and Dr Felix Aponte-Gonzalez conducted ethnographic research, following 16 low-income Puerto Rican families to find out how they recovered from Maria. Gemma turned this research into a 20-page comic, free to download in English and in Spanish. Although the comic tells the story of a fictional family, After Maria is based on the experiences that tie together all of the Puerto Rican families Gemma spoke to. This event was also the topic of a double workshop at the GA Conference in April 2022.
This comic threads together vignettes from qualitative research on the everyday and often hidden ways that marginalised families experience and adapt to climate change in Bangladesh, South Africa, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, and Barbuda to form one global story of everyday life with climate change. This comic is a lot more aimed at school children and supporting teachers as the Geography Teachers Association are also creating a teaching resource to accompany the comic.
The teaching materials are now available to download from the GTAV website (as is the original comic).
She had previously worked on a comic following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. I had used this in my teaching as part of the package of lockdown learning material as the comic could be downloaded and viewed at home. It tells the story of the aftermath of the hurricane.
For one year, Dr Gemma Sou and Dr Felix Aponte-Gonzalez conducted ethnographic research, following 16 low-income Puerto Rican families to find out how they recovered from Maria. Gemma turned this research into a 20-page comic, free to download in English and in Spanish. Although the comic tells the story of a fictional family, After Maria is based on the experiences that tie together all of the Puerto Rican families Gemma spoke to. This event was also the topic of a double workshop at the GA Conference in April 2022.
I was asked to look at the 2nd project she had developed: "Living with Climate Change" in collaboration with Gina Ziervogel based at the University of Cape Town, Adeeba Risha based at BRAC Bangladesh, the London-based illustrator Cat Sims and the Geography Teachers Association of Victoria, Australia.
This comic threads together vignettes from qualitative research on the everyday and often hidden ways that marginalised families experience and adapt to climate change in Bangladesh, South Africa, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, and Barbuda to form one global story of everyday life with climate change. This comic is a lot more aimed at school children and supporting teachers as the Geography Teachers Association are also creating a teaching resource to accompany the comic.
The teaching materials are now available to download from the GTAV website (as is the original comic).
This is an excellent project and one I shall be using in the new academic year.
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