Dr. Jussi Parikka is the Co-Director of the Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture, Reader in Media Theory and History at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK and an Adjunct Research Scholar at the International Institute of Popular Culture at the University of Turku in Finland.
His research interests include the “biopolitics of network culture, neomaterialist cultural theory, transdisciplinary discourses and practices of knowledge, media anomalies, research/creative practice collaboration.” (ARC Digital)
Research projects include Spam Cultures, a project that “aims to develop tools and concepts for a critical understanding of the accidents of digital culture, and address the media anomalies of current digital culture” and to address the “biopolitics of networked culture”. (ARC Digital, Research @ the Centre) He addressed similar themes in his book Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses (Peter Lang, 2007) and in a volume he co-edited The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture (Hampton Press, Alternative Communications Series, 2009).
In collaboration with Milla Tiainen, Parikka is creating a conceptual laboratory devoted to Neomaterialist Cultural Analysis. This research will investigate transformations in cultural studies through a series of publications, events and seminars that will engage with trends in media and cultural theory. Forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press in 2010 as part of their Posthumanities-series is Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals, Technology and Cultural Theory.