ICR Distinguished Speaker Series: Lisa Parks

The Institute of Communications Research will present a Distinguished Speaker Series this spring, showcasing some of the most renowned scholars in the fields of communication and media studies. 

"The Other Side of the Smart Phone: MEMS Sensors and the Tiny Matters of Mediation"

Presented by Lisa Parks, Distinguished Professor of Media Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, director of the Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab, and author of Media Backends (University of Illinois Press).

This talk is co-sponsored by the Humanities Research Institute.

About the Presenter

Lisa Parks, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Media Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara where she directs the Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab. She was formerly Professor of Comparative Media Studies and Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. She has researched satellite technologies and media infrastructures in international contexts for more than twenty years. Parks is author or co-editor of 8 books, including Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual (2005), Down to Earth: Satellite Technologies, Industries, and Cultures (2012), Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures (2015), and Media Backends: Digital Infrastructures and Sociotechnical Relations (2023), and has authored more than 100 scholarly articles and book chapters. Parks has been a Principal Investigator on major research grants from the National Science Foundation, the US State Department, and the Mellon Foundation and has collaborated with policy scholars, geographers, artists, and computer scientists. Parks has held visiting appointments at the IKKM at Bauhaus University in Weimar, the Institute for Advanced Study or Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, McGill University, University of Southern California, and the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. A 2018 MacArthur Fellow, Parks is committed to exploring how greater understanding of media and telecommunication systems can assist citizens, researchers, and policymakers to advance campaigns for technological, social, and environmental justice.