Challenging conventional funding structures to include intersectionally underrepresented casualised academics. The Interactive Content team help launch a new digital comic resource.
The In Their Own Time (ITOT) project shares the stories of eight insecurely employed long-term academics – University Tutor in Design and professional illustrator Maria Stoian met with each of them to document their “own time,” and tell their stories through comics.
Project leads
Collaborating closely with Maria, this project was led by two Co-Investigators: Dr Cécile Ménard and Dr Lena Wånggren, both Research Fellows from the School of GeoSciences.
Maria, Cécile and Lena approached the Interactive Content team to help transform their physical publication into a creative and valuable online equivalent resource.
Steph’s story
This is only a short preview; please visit the ITOT website, in your own time, and read all eight academic stories in their entirety.
Steph’s transcript
Steph is a single mum. Today is her daughter’s first day back at school after the holidays.
“I have two university jobs. Both are hourly, one is zero-hours.”
“I usually work in my own time from my kitchen table, in the evenings after my daughter has gone to bed.”
[Image Description] Steph with hot drink and laptop at kitchen table.
Website features
Restricted access times
One of the key requirements for the website design was to restrict access from 9 am to 5pm. As this project highlights the exclusionary expectation for casualised academics to do unpaid work “in their own time,” the ITOT team wanted visitors to read their stories outside of UK office hours.
This unique and impactful functionality was the primary justification for not publishing this resource on an existing University platform (e.g. EdWeb 2).
Sustainability
The agreed long-term plan is to host this bespoke site for up to three years before submitting it to the UK Web Archive. This will ensure there is a permanent record of it, but it will also remove the University’s requirement for website hosting, maintenance, security, and legal compliance (e.g. accessibility statements).
As the ITOT project received research funding, it’s important that all digital outputs are available as long as possible.
University guidance on website archiving
Bespoke design
To save on time and budget, we repurposed a suitable third-party WordPress theme (Kadence) with a free software licence (GNU General Public Licence).
In order to add bespoke design elements and retain better control, we developed a child theme for Kadence. For example, this child theme incorporated a handwritten typeface created by project illustrator Maria – ‘Stoian Comic’.
Responsive comics
For each academic’s story, there are actually two versions of the digital comic. Maria designed and illustrated panels that are optimised for either desktop or smartphone layouts.
If you look closely at the third row of Chris’ comic on a desktop/laptop, you can see a wide-panel containing spoons that bridges two neighbouring panels. But on a mobile, Maria has rearranged the panels so they can be stacked vertically without losing any of the story.
Chris’ story (excerpt)
Chris’ transcript
Chris is employed for 14 hours a week but often works more hours on their research, funding applications and university citizenship.
[Image Description] Visitor drawing a portrait of Chris while they sit and talk
[Image Description] Picture of 5 spoons.
I ask a lot of questions.
“I think we’re doing research badly right now.”
“People need more time to do reproducible and replicable research.”
[Image Description] Portrait evolves while Chris keeps talking.
Inclusivity
Inclusive comics
To ensure as many people as possible can appreciate the ITOT resource, e-learning Developer Jackie Aim created transcripts for each of the eight academic comics.
We did experiment with alt text (short for alternative text) descriptions for each of the ~20 comic panels, but testing with various screen readers flagged an unforeseen issue. Some screen readers automatically read out the hand-drawn text in the panel in addition to the alt text provided. Having this repetition was deemed unacceptable, so we all agreed to include just the transcript for each comic.
How to write good alt text (University of Edinburgh – Mel Batcharj)
Accessibility compliance
Our Digital Accessibility Intern, David Buik, completed the accessibility testing and published the required Accessibility Statement in line with Public Sector Body (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
Having compliance with the WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria means you should be able to:
- Zoom in up to 500% without the text spilling off the screen or without loss of content
- Navigate most of the site using keyboard only
- Navigate most of the site using speech recognition software e.g. Dragon
- Use the website without encountering any inactivity timeouts
- Listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)
Thank you to Viki Galt and Lori Anderson from the University Disability Information Team, who professionally verified David’s report and statement.
Licence and copyright
Creative Commons licence
When we first met the ITOT team, they were not so familiar with the practice of Creative Commons licensing, so it was a lovely opportunity to see if we could apply a licence that would help others freely share this valuable resource.
Maria’s beautiful comics (PDF downloads) and the project text written by Cécile and Lena are now licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 licence.
The University of Edinburgh’s OER Policy
The University of Edinburgh has an Open Education Resources (OERs) policy that outlines the institutional position on OERs and provides guidelines for practice in learning and teaching. You can find the policy in the University’s Policy Directory, or directly via the following link:
Open Educational Resources Policy (PDF)
Copyright notice
Copyright © 2025 The University of Edinburgh. Illustrations and comics by Maria Stoian. Website text by Dr Cécile Ménard, Dr Lena Wånggren and Maria Stoian.
Getting in touch
We will be happy to discuss your needs and ideas and develop an approach that delivers a high-quality output, whatever your budget.
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