Michelle de Gruijl

As an illustrator and anthropologist specialized in conflict resolution, Michelle de Gruijl (Studio Michel Marie) wants to make contemporary social issues more accessible by turning them into illustrations, visual accounts and pieces of graphic journalism. By sharing these stories, she wants to raise knowledge of subjects such as war or inequality and what these mean for other people. In doing so, she wants to motivate and inspire the spectator to develop more empathy and gain understanding of unfamiliar individuals and situations. In June 2016, she published her first piece of graphic journalism about Ahmad on online platform Drawing The Times.