The Routledge Companion to Animation Studies

Bringing together 46 original contributions from a broad range of international scholars, this comprehensive volume maps the key debates, histories, concepts, and practices that shape animation studies today.

Organised into thematic sections, it addresses animation’s historical development, representational politics, and cultural functions, alongside focused discussions of aesthetics, sound, technology, and production contexts. Topics include race, gender, disability, medium specificity, environmentalism, artificial intelligence, game engines, computer-generated animation, and global animation cultures, with sustained attention to both established traditions and emerging forms.

Designed as both a reference work and a pedagogical resource, this Companion is an essential guide for researchers, teachers, and students working in animation, film, and media studies, as well as readers approaching animation from adjacent disciplines or professional contexts.

Nichola Dobson is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Director in Animation at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. Founding editor of Animation Studies (2006–2011) and Animation Studies 2.0 (2012–2020), she has published on animation, television genre and fan fiction, including Norman McLaren: Between the Frames (2018) and Historical Dictionary of Animation and Cartoons, Volume 2 (2020). She was President of the Society for Animation Studies between 2015 and 2019. She is currently the Director of the Animation Research Network Scotland.

Paul Taberham is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Arts University Bournemouth. He is the author of Lessons in Perception: The Avant-Garde Filmmaker as Practical Psychologist, and Poetics of Animation: Medium, Context, and Aesthetics. He is also co-editor of Cognitive Media Theory, Experimental Animation: From Analogue to Digital, and Introduction to Screen Narrative: Perspectives on Story Production and Comprehension. A Fellow of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image and an editorial board member for Animation: an interdisciplinary journal, his research approaches film and animation through the analytic tradition, with particular attention to poetics, narratology, and cognition.