ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2825-7612
Scopus Author ID: 24921017600
ResearcherID: ABC-7855-2022
Google Scholar Profile: HdvyxvAAAAAJ

Metrics for Academic and Research Impact

Dr. Damien Charrieras is a cultural studies scholar and a new media theorist. He is since 2019 Program Leader for the Master of Art in Creative Media, the third biggest MA program at CityUHK which attracts more than 2000 applicants every year. 

He is the director of the Center for Blockchain and Generative Culture (CBGC) and conducts a humanistic inquiry into the recent surge of technologies of decentralization (blockchain, cryptos, AI, Metaverse). The CBGC explores how technologies of decentralization reconfigure digital worldmaking, techno-cultures, computational aesthetics, and spatial media. He is also the initiator of the crypto-culture collective, which is a space for critical discussions about new media and society. 

His current funded projects investigate situated forms of digital creativity in urban settings (media arts; electronic music); the diverse technologies used to conceive 3D real-time environments (especially game engines); blockchain in video games and art; discursive approaches to creative software; new pedagogical approaches to Critical Worldbuilding. Over the past 13 years his successful grants as Principal Investigator totalise HK$ 6 Millions.

He co-edited the volume Underground Music Cultures and Music-Making in Los Angeles: 'Imaginary Cities' (Palgrave Macmillan 2025), Fractured Scenes - Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021) as well as Electronic Cities: Music, Policies and Space in the 21st Century (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021). He co-authored a public policy report for the Policy Innovation and Co- ordination Office (PICO), Hong Kong S.A.R. Government (The Development of a New Media Expertise in the Creative Economy of Hong Kong, 171p., 2019). He wrote several papers at the crossing of philosophy and digital creative technologies: on video game engines as technical individuals (in Social Science Information, Sage), on the New Computational Aesthetics of Creative Software (Balkan Journal of Philosophy). He co-authored papers on the shifting spaces of creativity in Hong Kong in Cities (Elsevier), on the scene(s) of sonic arts in Hong Kong (in Organised Sound, Cambridge University Press), Analogizing the computer in music making practices (in Organised Sound, Cambridge University Press), on the coproduction of organizational presence (Human Relations, Tavistock Institute, Sage). He published several book chapters in edited volumes (Palgrave MacMillan).

He teaches courses on Technofutures: Critical Approaches to the Metaverse, AI, and Blockchain and on World Making: Artistic Strategies for Contingent Systems.  

He co-organised in January 2025 The Congress of Butoh Souls Symposium involving interventions of Tadashi Endo, Ima Tenko, Yasuo Fukurozaka, Masami Yurabe with Miwako Inagaki, Yuri Nagaoka and Seisaku (Sotheby's Maison, Xevarion Institute and School of Creative Media). 

Between 2014 and 2016 he has been a core member of the organising committee of ISEA 2016 (600+ presenters and artists), Chair of Artist Talks/Work-in-Progress presentations, and Conference Track Chair (Track: Noise Contra Signal). He is co-editor of ISEA 2016 proceedings. 

He is a Board member and member of the international editorial committee of .able: an image-based journal at the intersection of art, design, and sciences responding to the complexities of today’s society. He has served as a reviewer for Leonardo (MIT Press), Journal of Posthuman Studies (The Pennsylvania State University Press), New Media and Society (Sage), Screen (Oxford University Press), Continuum (Routledge), Sustainable Cities and Society (Elsevier), Communication and the Public (Sage), PLOS One, International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development (Inderscience Publishers), Philosophy and Technology (Springer), Amsterdam University Press (book manuscript reviewer).

Formation
Sciences Po Lyon diploma (multidisciplinary foundation in the humanities and social sciences, major in Economy & Finance) - Lyon Institute of Political Studies
French Press Institute diploma (information and communication studies) - French Press Institute, Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas University
Master of Advanced Studies in Media and Multimedia Studies, French Press Institute, Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas University
PhD in film studies, Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 University
PhD in communication studies, University of Montreal

FRQSC postdoc fellow at McGill University 

Areas of Research

1. **Blockchain & Generative Cultures:**
Examines how blockchain, NFTs, and crypto reshape creative video games and media arts; leads research on decentralization and digital aesthetics.

2. **Game Engines & Metacreation:**
Explores game engines as tools for spatial aesthetics, procedural creativity, and immersive art, bridging production and cultural mediation.

3. **Technofutures & AI:**
Analyzes AI, cybernetics, and the metaverse from critical, philosophical, and aesthetic perspectives in art.

4. **New Media Arts Practices:**
Documents new media artists’ creative practices and trajectories in Montreal and Hong Kong.

5. **Music & Urban Media Cultures:**
Studies underground and experimental music scenes and place-based sonic creativity in Hong Kong, Brisbane, and Los Angeles.

6. **Creative Education & Pedagogy:**
Develops innovative curricula on digital literacy, worldbuilding, and speculative design; promotes emerging tech in creative media education through Team-Based Learning.

Areas of scholarly interest
* cultural studies, cultural policy research, cultural sociology, urban media studies, creative industries, popular music studies
* information sciences, interface studies, platform studies, infrastructure studies
* critical new media studies, media theory, media ecology, sound studies
* new materialism, process philosophy, radical empiricism, affective turn, creation as emergence, philosophy of technology