Irina Aristarkhova

Irina Aristarkhova, PhD., is a scholar and writer who is interested in cultural transformations and new forms of thinking, making, and being. Her ongoing research and teaching encompass comparative feminist theory, digital and technoscience studies, and contemporary aesthetics.

Among Aristarkhova’s publications, monographs Hospitality of the Matrix: Philosophy, Biomedicine, and Culture (Columbia University Press, 2012) and Arrested Welcome: Hospitality in Contemporary Art (University of Minnesota Press, 2020, Open Access at JSTORE), develop novel feminist approaches to theory and practice of hospitality. In Russian, Aristarkhova edited and contributed to the book Woman Does Not Exist: Contemporary Studies of Sexual Difference (1999), and the Russian translation of Luce Irigaray’s An Ethics of Sexual Difference (2005). In 2002-2005, Irina Aristarkhova, together with Faith Wilding, Coco Fusco, and Maria Fernandez, ran “Undercurrents,” a list-serve on cyberfeminism, new technologies, colonialism and globalization.

Prior to Michigan, Aristarkhova held faculty positions at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park (joint appointment at the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and School of Visual Art) and National University of Singapore (Department of Communications and New Media and the University Scholars Program, where she directed Cyberarts and Cyberculture Research Initiative, 2001-2005).

In 2021, Aristarkhova chaired the 34^th Conference of Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, that took place virtually during the pandemic. In 2021-2022 she was the Interim Director of the Digital Studies Institute, and in 2024, Aristarkhova assumed a three-year appointment as a Co-Editor of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Most recently, Aristarkhova edited and contributed to UnMyth: Works and Worlds of Mithu Sen, the first artist monograph of this leading contemporary Indian artist (2025), and in 2026, she co-authored Night Sweats: Cyberfeminist Practices, which came out of Palgrave's Bioart book series and builds on the legacy of subRosa, a cyberfeminist art collective.

At the University of Michigan, Aristarkhova is a Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design and the Digital Studies Institute (College of Literature, Science, and the Arts), and is a Faculty Affiliate at Department of American Culture, ESC: Center for Ethics, Society and Computing, Institute for Research on Women & Gender, Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies, and Center for Southeast Asian Studies.