Patrik Svensson is a scholar, writer, curator and entrepreneur.  He was Visiting Professor of Digital Humanities at UCLA 2016-2020, Distinguished Visiting Fellow/Visiting Professor at CUNY Graduate Center 2015-2016, and Professor of Humanities and Information Technology at Umeå University 2012-2020.. Svensson is the former Director of HUMlab (2000-2014). He was a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies (SCAS) during the Spring Semester of 2022.

Two major themes in Svensson’s work are Digital Humanities and Conditions for Knowledge Production. The first theme includes research and practice in relation to the intersection of the humanities and information technology with a particular focus on the history, role and place of the digital humanities. The second theme addresses research infrastructure, spaces for learning and knowledge production, intellectual middleware, presentation software and academic events. Publications include Big Digital Humanities (University of Michigan Press, 2016), Between Humanities and the Digital (co-edited with David Theo Goldberg, MIT Press, 2015) and “’One Damn Slide After Another’: PowerPoint at every Occasion for Speech” (with Erica Robles-Anderson. Computational Culture, 2016). He is currently finishing a book on Humane Infrastructures for MIT Press. An emerging theme is the role of humane and humanistic knowledge and competence in relation to to societal challenges and complex problems, especially in relation to socio-technological systems. Svensson’s work seeks to be critical and interventionist. He consults on building spaces, institutions and infrastructure.

Photo credits (unless individually specified) for this site: Patrik Svensson or HUMlab/Umeå University. Photo credit for the site cover photo: Jane Nguyen, Ktown for All.