Scott McQuire is Associate Professor in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne and founder—with Nikos Papastergiadis—of the Spatial Aesthetics research cluster. He is Chief Investigator on the Australian Research Council Linkage Project, ‘Large Screens and the Transnational Public Sphere’ and the Project Leader of the ARC Discovery Projects, the ‘Spatial Impact of Digital Technology on Contemporary Art and New Art Institutions’ and ‘Public Screens and the Transformation of Public Space’. Prior to joining the School of Culture and Communication he was an ARC Research Fellow on the project ‘Space, Place, Identity and the Information Age’.

A key aspect of Scott’s research has been the exploration of the social effects of media technologies, and he has produced two major research reports concerning the effects of technological change on the Australian film industry, both commissioned by the Communications Law Centre, and jointly published by the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy, and the Australian Film Commission. Crossing the Digital Threshold (1997) and Maximum Vision: Large Format and Special Venue Cinema(1999). Scott has a strong interest in interdisciplinary research linking the fields of new media, contemporary art, urbanism and critical social theory. He presented the keynote address at Urban Screens 2005 in Amsterdam and was one of the organizers of the Urban Screens: Mobile Publics conference in Melbourne in 2008.

His major publications include The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space(2008), Empires, Ruins and Networks: The Transnational Agenda in Art (2005) andVisions of Modernity (1998). He has recently edited the Urban Screens Reader (2009) with Meredith Martin and Sabine Niederer.