Slowing Down and Taking Time: A Proposal for Integrating Care Ethics into Visual Storytelling Research and Practice.

This article focuses on an arts-based research project that reconfigures survivor testimony within a relational ethics framework by using comic drawing as a collaborative, inquiry-based, and care-centered practice. It highlights the partnership between Utrecht-based comics artist Tobi Dahmen and Akram, a young Syrian man who survived detention and torture under Bashar al-Assad's regime, emphasizing shared authorial agency and mutual trust throughout their life writing sessions. The project, part of the Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives initiative, prioritizes slow scholarship and relational storytelling to foster mindful, culturally sensitive engagement with survivors of mass atrocity. By integrating visual storytelling with ethical collaboration, the research aims to honor survivors' experiences while addressing power imbalances and supporting mental health within the research process.