Paul Ward
BA (Hons)
Film Studies and English
Polytechnic of North London
MA Media Studies
Institute of Education, University of London
Ph.D
Institute of Education, University of London
Senior Lecturer
BA (Hons) Animation Production
Paul’s Ph.D focused on the emergence of Animation Studies as an interdisciplinary field. Current research explores the interface between animation and a range of other cultural practices, including videogames, documentary/non-fiction filmmaking and computer-generated imagery. It investigates the convergence/dialectic between ‘animated’ and ‘live action’ media and examines the history and theory of documentary practices. Paul is author of Documentary: the Margins of Reality (Wallflower Press and Columbia University Press, 2005). He has published numerous articles in edited anthologies on topics including animated documentaries, the relationship between animation and videogames, and recent innovations in drama-documentary. His work has also appeared in scholarly journals such as the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television; Animation Journal; Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies; Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, to which Paul contributed ‘Some Thoughts on Theory-Practice Relationships in Animation Studies’, (1:2, 2006, pp. 229-45). In July 2008, this article won the McLaren-Lambart Award for Best Scholarly Essay (in the field of Animation Studies). Paul also published ‘Animated Realities: the Animated Film, Documentary, Realism’ in the peer-reviewed e-journal, Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (8:2) at http://reconstruction.eserver.org/082/ward.shtml
Recent publications include ‘Drama-documentary, Ethics and Notions of Performance: the “Flight 93” Films’ in Austin, T. and de Jong, W. eds, Re-Thinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices (Maidenhead: Open University Press/McGraw-Hill, 2008); ‘The Documentary Form’ in Nelmes, J. ed., Introduction to Film Studies (4th edition), (London: Routledge, 2007); ‘The Future of Documentary: “Conditional Tense” Documentary and the Historical Record’ in Rhodes, G. and Springer, J. P. eds, Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2006). Paul is joint editor of – and contributed a chapter, ‘Animated Interactions: Animation Aesthetics and the “Interactive” Documentary’ to – Animated ‘Worlds’ (Eastleigh: John Libbey, 2006). He also contributed fifteen entries on various directors to Murphy, R. ed., Directors in British and Irish Cinema: A Reference Companion (London: BFI, 2006).
Paul regularly contributes to conferences within his subject discipline. He delivered ‘Animating Autistic Subjectivity: the “Iterative” and the “Everyday”’ at the conference Autism and Representation at Liverpool John Moores University (February 2006) and ‘Drama-documentary, Ethics and Performance: the “Flight 93” Films’ at the conference Documentary Now! at Birkbeck College, University of London (April 2007). He was invited to address the Royal College of Art Moving Image Research Methods Symposium (January 2007) on the subject of practice-theory relations in moving image research. He was a speaker on the opening panel of the 19th Society for Animation Studies conference, Portland State University, USA, (June 2007). He was also convenor and chair of the 20th Society for Animation Studies International Conference, Animation Unlimited, held at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth in July 2008 and supported by the SWRDA.
Paul is a board member of the Society for Animation Studies (and serves on the editorial board for Animation Studies, the official online journal of the Society http://www.animationstudies.org/); and editorial board member and reviews editor for Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal (http://anm.sagepub.com/). He is a peer reviewer for AHRC Research Leave applications and member of the AHRC Peer Review College; a member of the AVPhD discussion network (for those undertaking and supervising doctoral level research in the audio-visual/creative sectors); and a member of the South West Screen Studies Network, a discussion forum for scholars in the field of media.
Image from Topic Pot Pie (Bob Sabiston, US, 2002). Courtesy Bob Sabiston, copyright Flat Black Films.
Sabiston is the inventor of the so-called ‘Rotoshop’ process – a type of rotoscoped animation where live action footage is ‘painted over’ frame by frame using computers – as seen in this short film from 2002, and more recent features such as A Scanner Darkly (2006). The process raises issues relating to how animation and live action interact and overlap, and the relative realisms of different types of moving image production – questions which are central to Paul’s research.