During the last few years, we’ve hosted and participated in many zine workshops. We’ve included reflections about these events in various blog posts

 

Reflecting on what we’ve learnt, we’ve just published an Open Access article in Social Work Education exploring how zines can be used in learning and teaching, in both formal and less formal settings.

 

You can read the article here.

 

It demonstrates how zines can be used to generate and to communicate alternative forms of Mad-centered knowledge.

 

We draw on Alison Piepmeier’s idea of zines as a pedagogy of hope, that enables learners to process alternative knowledge and understanding; actively critique existing services and the policy that informs them; and imagine alternatives.

 

We also point to some potential pitfalls of using zines in teaching: decontextualisation, unethical sharing, the othering of madness; and instrumentalising zines.

 

We hope that our article will interest others exploring the learning potential of Madzines. If you find any of this useful, we’d love to hear from you.

 

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Reference this blog post: Anderson, J. (2025) Madzine Research.  ‘Madzine Pedabogy: using zines in critical mental health learning and education’. 3 March. Available: https://madzines.org/mad-zine-pedagogy-using-zines-in-critical-mental-health-learning-and-education/