Sean Cubitt was born in Lincolnshire of Irish parents. He studied at Queens’ College Cambridge and McGill University, Montreal. In the 1980s he worked freelance in art schools, video workshops, journalism and at the Society for Education in Film and television. He spent the 1990s in Liverpool, where he was involved in developing the Foundation for Art and Creative technology (FACT). In 2000, he moved to New Zealand with wife Alison and dog Zebedee, and now holds dual nationality with New Zealand and the UK.

He was Professor of Media and Communications at The University of Melbourne until 2011, when he returned to the UK to take a post at the University of Southampton's Winchester School of Art

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