Lisa Parks is a global media scholar whose research focuses on three areas: satellite technologies and media cultures; critical studies of media infrastructures; and media, militarization and surveillance.
Parks is Distinguished Professor at University of California-Santa Barbara, and Director of the Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab. She is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow, and has held visiting appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin, McGill University, University of Southern California, the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and IKKM at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. She has been a PI on major research grants from the National Science Foundation and the US State Department, and has collaborated with artists, geographers, and computer scientists.
Before returning to UCSB, Parks was Professor of Comparative Media Studies and Science and Technology Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.