WHAT?

ERC means European Research Council. Since 2007, the European Research Council funds thousands of ambitious science projects. The ERC’s mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence. The ERC approach is ‘investigator-driven’ and ‘bottom-up’ by nature, which allows researchers to identify new opportunities and directions in any field of research, rather than being led by priorities set by politicians. This ensures that funds are channelled into new and promising areas of research with a greater degree of flexibility.
Comics means… comics! And that’s what we are doing: 16 comics about ERC-funded science.

WHY?

We believe in the power of visual storytelling, and we want to illustrate each ERCcOMIC in a concrete, memorable and engaging way.
We do not want to do traditional popularisation. We want to draw inspiration from science, tell stories and create images.

WHO?

La Bande Destinée is a communication agency specialising in illustration, comics and animation. Founded in Paris in 2007, the agency collaborates with a vast group of comic artists and illustrators such as Gipi and Manuele Fior, both winners of the International Comics Festival of Angoulême.
Sorbonne University is a multidisciplinary and research-intensive university with world-famous origins.
Continuing the humanist tradition of the Sorbonne, it is devoted to meeting the scientific challenges of the 21st century and spreading the knowledge created in its laboratories by its research teams and transmitted to its students and to society as a whole. Sorbonne University’s three faculties in humanities, medicine and science each with the wide-ranging autonomy necessary to conduct its ambitious programs in both research and education.