IMD in United Kingdom

A Bad Bugs Bookclub Special Event: Fanny Hesse and the Graphic Novel

When: 17 September 2025

Time: Online (90 minutes duration, from 6.30 - 8.00pm UK time. )

Event Description

The Bad Bugs Bookclub was launched in 2009, with the aim of encouraging scientists and non-scientists together to discuss how infectious diseases are portrayed in novels of fiction – as a public engagement project. More than 100 books and almost 100 meetings on, the bookclub thrives, with various peer-reviewed publications describing its progress (Verran, Joanna (2024) How to set up and run a Bad Bugs Bookclub group. Access microbiology, 6 (9). 000846.v3 ISSN 2516-8290). Each year, there has been a Bookclub meeting during IMD.

This year the meeting will be a little different. The group will be discussing the graphic novel as a medium for the bookclub discussions, firstly using Resistance by Val McDermid and Kathryn Briggs (2021) as the focus, and then diverging into other graphic novels that focus on infectious disease.

Meanwhile, Corrado Nai and colleagues have been working on a new graphic novel which describes the recognition in 1881, by Fanny Hesse, a German housewife, that agar could be used as a base for microbiological growth media (https://fanny-hesse-graphic-novel.site/). Her discovery transformed the study of microorganisms, enabling pure cultures to be studied, and Koch’s postulates to be …postulated.  This contribution to microbiology, by the wife of a laboratory researcher, was unacknowledged until recently.

After a presentation by Corrado, the Bookclub will talk about some of the draft sections of this new graphic novel, and its future publication will be explored.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/corradonai

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fanny.hesse.story/

Registration:
If you wish to join our meeting, please email me  j.verran@mmu.ac.uk