Claus Pias

Claus Pias (born 1967 in Cologne, West Germany) is a German media theorist and media historian. He is a professor for history and epistemology of media at the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM) at Leuphana University in Lueneburg, Germany.

Life and work Pias studied Electrical Engineering in Aachen, Germany and Art History, German Studies and Philosophy in Bonn and Bochum, Germany. In 1993 he became Research Assistant for History of Architecture at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany. Three years later, he moved to the Chair of Joseph Vogl for "History and Theory of Artificial Worlds". In 2000 he earned his doctorate in Weimar under the supervision of Joseph Vogl and German media theorist Friedrich Kittler. In 2002 he was appointed Junior Professor for "Media Technology and Media Philosophy" at the Ruhr-University Bochum. From 2006 to 2010 he was full Professor for "Epistemology and Philosophy of Digital Media" at the University of Vienna, Austria.

Since the winter semester of 2010 he has worked and taught in Lueneburg. In the same year, he co-founded the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM) at the Faculty of Culture. In 2012, he was also co-founder of the Center for Digital Cultures (CDC) and is a member of the board of directors of the research center. He is also currently director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Media Cultures of Computer Simulation (mecs) and the Digital Cultures Research Lab (DCRL), all at Leuphana University, Lueneburg. Since 2010 Pias was a Senior Fellow at the International Research Institute for Cultural Technologies and Media Philosophy (IKKM) in Weimar, the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna, the Institute for Advanced Study / Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin, the Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Integration” at the University of Konstanz, and the Center for Advanced Studies "BildEvidenz. History and Aesthetics" at Free University, Berlin. In 2017 he was visiting professor at Princeton University. He is also a member of the Graduate Schools "Loose Connections: Collectivity at the intersection of digital and urban space" in Hamburg and "Cultures of Critique" in Lueneburg.

His main areas of interest are media theory, history of science of ‚mediathinking‘ and the history and epistemology of simulation and cybernetics.

He published the collected protocols and documents of the Macy Conferences (1946–1953) in two volumes in 2003/2004. In addition to his publishing activity he supervised the publication of the critical writings in individual editions by Hermann Bahr from 2004 to 2013. Together with Joseph Vogl, he publishes "sequenzia", a series of media science and science history at the Diaphanes publishing house Zurich/Berlin