Dr. Damien Charrieras is a cultural studies scholar and a media theorist. He is currently Program Leader for the Master of Art in Creative Media and deputy program leader for the PhD in Creative Media at the School of Creative Media.

He is a founding member of the ACIM Laboratory for Interventions in Speculative Finance (LISF) which explores the intersection between media art and new financial technologies (algorithmic trading, blockchain technology) and more generally the complex dynamics of financialization.

His current funded projects investigate situated forms of digital creativity in urban setting (media arts; electronic music); the diverse technologies used to conceive 3D real time environment (especially game engines); blockchain in video games and art; discursive approaches to creative software; new pedagogical approaches to Critical Worldbuiling. Over the past 8 years his successful grants as Principal Investigator totalise HK$ 3,14M.

He recently co-edited the volume Fractured Scenes - Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia (Palgrave MacMillan, in press) as well as Electronic Cities: Music, Policies and Space in the 21st Century (Palgrave MacMillan, in press). He authored a public policy report for the Policy Innovation and Co- ordination Office (PICO), Hong Kong S.A.R. Government (The Development of a New Media Expertise in the Creative Economy of Hong Kong, 171p., 2019). His papers have been published in Cities (Elsevier), Organised Sound (Cambridge University Press), Social Science Information (Sage) and Human Relations (Tavistock Institute, Sage). He published several book chapters in edited volumes (Palgrave MacMillan). 

He has served as a reviewer for New Media and Society (Sage), Screen (Oxford University Press), Continuum (Routledge), Sustainable Cities and Society (Elsevier), Communication and the Public (Sage), International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development (Inderscience Publishers), Philosophy and Technology (Springer), Amsterdam University Press (book manuscript reviewer).

He has been FRQSC postdoc fellow at McGill University (2010-2012), a visiting scholar at Brown University (Modern Culture and Media) and New York University (Music); he worked as a researcher at the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (Paris), at the Centre National de la Cinématographie (Paris) and at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (Montréal). 

Formation

Sciences Po Lyon diploma (multidisciplinary foundation in the humanities and social sciences, major in economy & finance) - Lyon Institute of Political Studies 

French Press Institute diploma  (information and communication studies) - French Press Institute, University Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas  

Master of Advanced Studies in Media and Multimedia Studies, French Press Institute, University Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas 

Doctorat d’Études cinématographiques et audiovisuelles, Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 University 

PhD in communication studies, University of Montreal 

Areas of Research

• creative urban ecologies in contemporary societies; artistic scenes/practices/aesthetics (new media arts, electronic/experimental music); cultural policies; artistic expertise in the creative economy; new media art education 
• politics of finance, arts and technologies; new financial technologies in art
• creative software infrastructures; creative acts, instruments and instrumentalities in the digital age; post-anthropocentric forms of creativity
• world building

Areas of scholarly interest

• cultural studies, cultural policy research, cultural sociology, urban media studies, creative industries, popular music studies
• information sciences, interface studies, platform studies, infrastructure studies
• critical new media, studies, media theory, media ecology, sound studies
• new materialism, Foucault, process philosophy, radical empiricism, cognitive approaches to creation, philosophy of technology