Personal profile

Personal profile

I am a cultural theorist working with technological cultures, media philosophy and aesthetics. My research is interdisciplinary and draws upon theories of computing, art, philosophy and literature. I have a sustained interest in questions of subjectivation in relationship to aesthetics and technology. My latest book, Ideal Subjects. Abstract People of AI (University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming in the autumn of 2025) explores how data and artificial intelligence abstract people into new kinds of subjects. My previous book, co-written with Matthew Fuller, Bleak Joys. Aesthetics of Ecology and Impossibility (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) explores aesthetics, ethics and ecology during times of multiple crises. This work traces connections between large scale systems such as ecologies, technical infrastructures or mechanisms of calculation and processes of subjectivation.

I began my career working in media arts. My book Art Platforms and Cultural Production on the Internet (Routledge, 2012) conceptualises aesthetic and political engagements with technology at the dawn of the World Wide Web, proposing the concepts of organisational aesthetics and art platforms to understand collective art practices and art movements of the 1990s and early 2000s. This book is based on my work as a co-organiser of software art repository Runme.org and a co-curator of software art festivals (four editions of the Readme festival between 2002 and 2005 in Moscow, Helsinki, Aarhus and Dortmund) and other exhibitions. I edited or co-edited four Readme publications, the most significant of which is Readme. Software Arts and Cultures (Aarhus University Press, 2004). 

I have written on digital art and digital vernaculars of different kinds, such as digital folklore, memes, lurkers and new media idiocy from a philosophical perspective.

I am editor of Fun and Software. Exploring Pleasure, Pain and Paradox in Computing (Bloomsbury 2014) and a founding co-editor of open access peer-reviewed journal Computational Culture, a Journal of Software Studies

My first degree is in philology from Lomonosov State University, Moscow, where I trained in linguistics and literary scholarship, and my PhD is in digital media from the Media Lab at Aalto University (Helsinki). Prior to joining Royal Holloway, I held positions at Warwick University, London Metropolitan University, Goldsmiths and Russian State University for the Humanities.  

I held a fellowship at Australian National University, two fellowships at the University of Leuphana’s Digital Cultures Research Lab, was part of the Posthumanities International Network (funded by the Swedish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences) and of the Visual Social Media Lab (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK). I also served as a co-I on the StoryFutures Creative Cluster, funded by UKRI. 

I am Director of Research and REF lead for Media Arts Department.

 

 

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 13 - Climate Action

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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