Benjamin Dix, a Senior Fellow at SOAS, University of London, and founder of PositiveNegatives (‘true stories, drawn from life’), and the Why Comics? charity, worked across South Asia as a professional photographer (2003-4), and subsequently as a Communications and Liaison Manager for the United Nations and various international NGOs across Asia and Africa (2005-11).

From 2004-8 and while with the UN, he was based in the LTTE-controlled Vanni, north Sri Lanka, throughout the post-tsunami reconstruction and subsequent civil war. Ben, who holds a PhD from SOAS, has created the graphic novel, The Vanni, drawing on first-hand interviews, references from official reports and cross referencing with experts in the field. The Vanni (to be published in 2019 by Myriad) aims to take the reader through the immense struggles, horrors and life changing decisions individual families must make when caught in conflict.

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Benjamin Dix