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Dr Farzaneh Yazdandoost

Farzaneh Yazdandoost
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Lecturer

Farzaneh Yazdandoost is a Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies and a scholar in Animation Studies, specialising in stop-motion puppet animation, materiality, and realism. Her research explores animation, performance, and medium specificity. She has published research on animation and performance, as well as medium specificity in animation.

[email protected]

Faculty:
Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
School:
Cambridge School of Art
Location:
Cambridge
Areas of Expertise:
Animation , Video , Cultural Studies , Visual Culture , Film, media and communication studies , Health and wellbeing
Research Supervision:
Yes
Courses taught:
Background

Farzaneh Yazdandoost is an animation scholar and video essayist specialising in stop-motion puppet animation and film criticism. Her research interests include medium specificity, materiality, and the interrelationship between realism, imperfection, and accident in the creative process.

As a video essayist, she is interested in the ways in which films draw attention to cultural norms and how these norms shape our experiences of everyday life. Her work focuses primarily on Iranian cinema and the cultural specificities of communities in West Asia. She is currently working on a project that investigates the ways in which communities construct, preserve, and transform the concept of honour (namus) through objects, images, and stories.

Spoken Languages
  • English
  • Farsi
Research interests
  • Medium Specificity
  • Animation and Realism
  • Material Culture and Story Telling
  • Video Essay Criticism
  • Traditional Stop-motion Puppet animation
  • E-Stop-motion animation
Areas of research supervision

Farzaneh warmly welcomes research students interested in Animation Studies, stop-motion animation, and video criticism. Please get in touch using the email address above. She would be very happy to discuss your project further.

Teaching
  • Critical Issues and Debates
  • Research Project
  • Art for Health and Wellbeing
Qualifications
  • PhD, Film and Media studies, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
  • M.A., Animation, Tehran University of Art, Tehran
  • B.A. (Hons.), Graphic Design Alzahra University, Tehran
Memberships, editorial boards
  • Member of Film Lab at Cambridge School of Art, ARU
Selected recent publications

Yazdandoost, F., 2026. ‘Medium-specificity in Animation’, in P. Taberham and N. Dobson (eds.), Routledge Companion to Animation, Routledge.

Yazdandoost, F., 2026. ‘The Implications of Arbitrary Motion in Puppet animation’, in C. Holiday, Performing Animation, Animating Performance: Bodies, Voices, and Spaces from Screen to Stage, Edinburgh University Press.

Yazdandoost, F., 2023. Arbitrary Motion: Accidentally On Purpose. [video essay] In: Zeitschrift Fur Medienwissenschaft. Issue 1. Available at: Arbitrary Motion: accidentally / on purpose | Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft.

Recent presentations and conferences

British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) conference (June 2024)
Realism and the Behavior of Physical Materials in Stop-motion Puppet Animation

Videography: Art and Academia: Epistemological, Political and Pedagogical Potentials of Audiovisual Practices (Hannover, 2022)
Arbitrary Motion: Accidentally On Purpose (nominated for best emerging video essayist; BFI 2023) The best video essays of 2023 | BFI)

Small Nations Animation (Nov-2022)
The influence of Ideology on Iranian Animation in Pre and Post-Revolutionary Era

Ars Electronica 2022 Conference- Linz- Expanded Animation (2022)
Synaesthetic Syntax- Drom Screen to Space: The Haptic Experience of Exhibited Animation

Society for Animation Studies Annual Conference (Middlesbrough, 2022)
Magic and Reality: The two Sides of the Same Coin

Bringing Legacy to Life, Stop-Motion conference- Animation Research Network Scotland Edinburgh College of Art (2021)
Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox: Quotidian textures at a close range

PhD Animation Research: Stop-Motion Aesthetic- Anglia Ruskin University (2021)
The Exhibitionist Approach of Wes Anderson in Puppet Animations

Society for Animation Studies Annual Conference: Performing Animation, Animating Performance- King’s College London (2019)
The Implications of Arbitrary Movement in Puppet Animation