Lev Manovich

Lev Manovich is a distinguished scholar in Arts and Culture, known for his pioneering work in new media theory and digital humanities. He held the position of Professor in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) from 2005 to 2012, following appointments as Associate Professor (2000-2005) and Assistant Professor (1996-2000). Prior to UCSD, he was Assistant Professor of Imaging and Digital Arts at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (1993-1996). Manovich earned his Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester in 1993, with a dissertation titled "The Engineering of Vision from Constructivism to Virtual Reality," and an M.A. in Experimental Psychology from New York University in 1988. At UCSD, he taught courses on digital art, new media theory, and data visualization. In 2007, he founded the Software Studies Initiative at UCSD's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), later renamed the Cultural Analytics Lab, which developed tools for analyzing massive cultural datasets through computational methods and media visualization.

Manovich's research specializations encompass digital culture, software studies, cultural analytics, and AI aesthetics. He is the author of 17 books, including The Language of New Media (MIT Press, 2001), described as "the most suggestive and broad-ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan," Software Takes Command (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), Instagram and Contemporary Image (Polity Press, 2017), Cultural Analytics (MIT Press, 2020), and Artificial Aesthetics (2024). His 235 articles have been reprinted over 460 times in 40 languages. Notable awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship (2002-2003), Hellman Faculty Fellowship (1997-1998), and grants from the Mellon Foundation, National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and others. Manovich's influence extends to public lectures—he has delivered over 650 keynotes in 45 countries—and editorial roles, such as editor of Springer's Quantitative Methods in Humanities and Social Science series. His art projects, like Soft Cinema (2005), Phototrails (2013), Selfiecity (2014), and On Broadway (2015), have been exhibited at major venues including the Centre Pompidou and Shanghai Biennale, demonstrating his impact on digital art and cultural analysis.