Dr. Damien Charrieras is a cultural studies scholar and a media theorist. His work is situated in cultural studies and the current critical research on new media; at a theoretical level, he is especially interested in the potential value of process philosophy and radical empiricism to assess the new forms of knowledge and understanding that emerge through technology-based creative practices.

Charrieras is a Sciences Po Lyon graduate and he holds a PhD in Cinematographic and Audiovisual Studies from Sorbonne Nouvelle University, a PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Montreal and he has been a postdoc fellow at McGill University. He has been a visiting scholar at Brown University (Modern Culture and Media), New York University (Music) and worked as a researcher at the lnstitut National de l'Audiovisuel, at the Centre National de la Cinematographie (Paris) and at the lnstitut National de la Recherche Scientifique (Montreal). 

Charrieras' main areas of research are: creative urban ecologies in contemporary societies such as new media art scenes and electronic/experimental music, cultural policies and new media art education; the politics of finance, art and technologies; media theory applied to creative software infrastructures, creative acts, and instruments in the digital age; and critical world building in narrative design. His current funded projects investigate situated forms of digital creativity in the 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; and new pedagogical approaches to Critical World-Building.

Charrieras explains that his work employs different philosophical, technical and sociological notions to understand the role of creativity in contemporary societies. "Getting Out of the Black Box: Analogising the use of computers in electronic music and sound art" which Charrieras wrote together with Frangois Mouillot, is an essay about the use of computer as instrument, was published in Organised Sound in August 2015. Together with Nevena lvanova, Charrieras also wrote "Emergence in video game production: Video game engines as technical individuals" for Social Science Information. This article at the intersection of computer sciences and the philosophy of technology, focuses on the ways in which the use of game engines - a toolkit that offers a set of functionalities to automatize the creation of real time 3D space - enable or preclude design possibilities in video games production. 

He has also written on "The shifting spaces of creativity in Hong Kong," an article which was published in Cities in 2018, in collaboration with Sebastien Darchen and Thomas Sigler. This paper focuses on how, paradoxically, artistic spaces are endangered by the commodification of Hong Kong as a creative city. In 2019, he submitted to the Policy Innovation and Co-ordination Office (PICO), Government of Hong Kong a report on "The development of a new media expertise in the creative economy of Hong Kong." He co-edited with F. Mouillot, "Fractured Scenes - Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia," and he also co-edited "Electronic Cities - Music, Policies and Space in the 21st Century," with S. Darchen and J. Willsteed. Both books will be published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2021.