In 2019 Bettina Egger, a graphic novelist, accompanied the Aramus Excavation and Field Expedition of the University of Innsbruck’s Department of Ancient Studies to Armenia and gained insight into the work and everyday life of the archaeology team. Since then, she has been drawing this experience in the form of a documentary travelogue, which will also accompany the mission in 2020 (or 2021).* This artistic work constitutes the departure point for a reflection on the encounter between archaeology and comic art. Her project therefore asks how the archaeology team’s scientific work can be narrated in comic form and how artistic and scientific approaches may enter into an interdisciplinary dialogue. Doing so creates an open space for reflection, in which different forms of knowledge production can be discussed.

* Contingent on the Covid-19 situation.

Bettina Egger (*1981) is a graphic novelist and illustrator. She studied fine arts and Russian at universities in Austria and France. In 2006 she obtained her master’s degree in fine arts at the University of Rennes with a diploma thesis, Fictional Cartography and Russian Fairy Tales, under the direction of Philippe Marcelé. Subsequently, she worked as a freelance artist in France. In 2018 she finished her Ph.D. studies at the University of Salzburg with a dissertation on Comics and Memory: Oral History in Emmanuel Guibert’s Oeuvre. Bettina Egger has published nine graphic novels in French and currently holds lectures on comics, works in the field of cultural cooperation between France and Austria, and creates various artistic projects.