Alison Reiko Loader teaches animation history, critical visuality, digital production; and makes stuff. Part media artist and part media historian, her past includes 3D game design in Tokyo and directing animated shorts at the National Film Board of Canada, while her collaborations with biologists mixed manipulated moving imagery, installation, and entomology. Her exhibitions and publications explore anamorphosis, camera obscuras, stereoscopy, scientific visual culture, race, gender, and animation, and her doctoral research is a feminist history of optical media in nineteenth-century Edinburgh. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Alison completed her PhD in Communication Studies in 2018, and in the same year co-hosted the Society of Animation Studies annual conference in Montreal. She has taught part-time in Concordia University's Design and Computation Arts programs since 2001. She also teaches in the University's department of Cinema, and in the 3d Animation and CGI program at Dawson College. In her spare time, she reads with young children as a JAME volunteer, functions as a board member of the National Association of Japanese Canadians - Quebec chapter, and makes clothes for her dog.
Education
PhD, Communication Studies, Concordia University
Research interests
old optical media, video installation, animation studies, plant and insect-based art
Areas of expertise
feminist media history, critical visuality studies, archival research, media archaeology, digital animation & video, media installation, stereoscopy, anamorphosis, camera obscuras
