Bernard D. Geoghegan is a NOMIS–eikones Fellow at eikones – Center for the Theory and History of the Image at the University of Basel (Switzerland), a senior lecturer in information studies at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), and a reader in the history and theory of digital media at King’s College London (UK).
Born in the US, Geoghegan earned a BA in literature at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, US) in 2001, an MA in media, technology and society at Northwestern University (Evanston, US) in 2011, and a binational PhD in media studies from Northwestern University and Bauhaus University (Weimar, Germany) in 2012. He has also taught at Humboldt University (2011–2016), Yale University (2016–2017), and the American University of Paris (2008).
Research Focus
Geoghegan is a historian and cultural theorist of digital media, with expertise on the rapports between computing and 20th-century critical theories. He has written extensively on how global political conflict shaped fields including AI, cybernetics, information theory, HCI and multimedia design. His book Code: From Information Theory to French Theory (Duke University Press) appeared in 2022. His interest in media, violence and globalization also shapes his work as a curator, for example, in projects on the Anthropocene as planetary infrastructures for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
Geoghegan is currently finishing a monograph titled Screenscapes: How Graphics Render Territories that looks at how modern graphics emerged from projects of territorial and imperial conquest. By exploring case studies from 18th-century astronomical almanacs to 21st-century GPS technologies, this project uncovers how computational models of vision and space encode political struggles. This interdisciplinary project enriches debates on digital visuality, offering a nuanced history of computational graphics that integrates the history of technology with cultural and aesthetic critique. In parallel, he recently wrote a manuscript for a short book on humanism and AI that is currently under review.
Awards and Recognition
Previous recognitions include a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the US Department of Education, Franke Visiting Fellow at Yale University’s Whitney Humanities Center, the IEEE Life Members’ Prize, the Schachterle Essay Prize and the Melvin Kranzberg Dissertation Fellowship.
Bernard Geoghegan portrait by Alessandro Frigerio