Dr. Lisa Parks is professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT, and previously worked as professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara (1998-2016). An interdisciplinary scholar rooted in the humanities, Parks’ research is focused in three areas: satellite technologies and global media cultures; critical studies of media infrastructures; and media, militarization and surveillance. Parks is the author of Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual (Duke UP, 2005) and Coverage: Vertical Mediation and the War on Terror (forthcoming). She is also co-editor with Nicole Starosielski of the award-winning book Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures (U of Illinois, 2015).