The Award Committee of 2023
Our goal is once again to assemble a diverse committee with a wide range of perspectives and expertise, drawing from different areas of the comic and manga scene, as well as the fields of research and press.
In 2023, we were able to enlist the following experts:
Lisa Frühbeis
Lisa Frühbeis is a feminist comic artist whose 2020 series " Busengewunder / Breastions received the Max und Moritz Prize for the best German comic strip, and the Bavarian Art Promotion Prize for Literature. Most recently her webcomic A Fraction of Time, published by the Goethe Institute Korea on tapas, received a Ginco Award for best webcomic in 2022. She lives in Augsburg, Germany.
http://lisa-fruehbeis.squarespace.com
Björn Hochschild
Björn Hochschild researches and teaches on comics and films at Freie Universität Berlin. He is a member of the coordination team of the Comic Studies Working Group (AG Comicforschung) of the German Society for Media Studies (GfM) (https://agcomic.net). His dissertation, completed in 2021, will be published by De Gruyter at the end of this year under the title Figuren begegnen in Comics und Filmen [Encountering Characters in Comics and Films].
Verena Maser
Verena Maser holds a PhD in Japanese studies and is a manga expert. For the last ten years, she has been translating manga from Japanese to German. Additionally, she organizes the monthly meetup of comic artists and professionals in the Nuremberg region.
Katharina-Sofie Naujoks
Katharina-Sofie Naujoks studied German language and literature, philosophy, and cultural studies at the University of Bremen; additionally a postgraduate education in cultural management in Hanover. She worked at various theaters as a press officer, in the artistic management, and as an assistant to the management of a Hamburg environmental education association. She is now employed for the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Brandenburg. Katharina-Sofie is also a co-founder of the Hamburg Comic Festival and, since 2019, on the board of the German Comic Association (Deutscher Comicvereins).
Judith C. Vogt
Judith C. Vogt (they) lives in Aachen, Germany, and writes novels, short stories, role-playing games, non-fiction, essays, and translations at the intersections of fantasy and feminism. They are co-host of the Genderswapped Podcast (www.genderswapped-podcast.de), co-editor of the queerfeminist short story magazine Queer*Welten (queerwelten.de), and co-initiator of the subgenre of progressive fantastic. Judith is also a member of the German Association for Research in the Fantastic (GfF).
The award committee is invited by the organizing team, but acts independently. Its members are free to use pre-existing categories or come up with their own criteria and ideas. A shortlist will be published a few weeks before the award ceremony.
Any questions regarding entries or technical difficulties are to be directed at the organizing team.