Pias studied
Electrical Engineering in
Aachen, Germany and
Art History,
German Studies and
Philosophy in
Bonn and
Bochum, Germany. In 1993 he became Research Assistant for History of Architecture at the
Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany. Three years later, he moved to the Chair of
Joseph Vogl for "History and Theory of Artificial Worlds". In 2000 he earned his doctorate in Weimar under the supervision of Joseph Vogl and German media theorist
Friedrich Kittler. In 2002 he was appointed Junior Professor for "Media Technology and Media Philosophy" at the
Ruhr-University Bochum. From 2006 to 2010 he was full Professor for "Epistemology and Philosophy of Digital Media" at the
University of Vienna,
Austria. Since the winter semester of 2010 he has worked and taught in
Lueneburg. In the same year, he co-founded the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM) at the Faculty of Culture. In 2012, he was also co-founder of the Center for Digital Cultures (CDC) and is a member of the board of directors of the research center. He is also currently director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Media Cultures of Computer Simulation (mecs) and the Digital Cultures Research Lab (DCRL), all at Leuphana University, Lueneburg. Since 2010 Pias was a Senior Fellow at the
International Research Institute for Cultural Technologies and Media Philosophy (IKKM) in Weimar, the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna, the Institute for Advanced Study / Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin, the Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Integration” at the University of Konstanz, and the Center for Advanced Studies "BildEvidenz. History and Aesthetics" at
Free University, Berlin. In 2017 he was visiting professor at
Princeton University. He is also a member of the Graduate Schools "Loose Connections: Collectivity at the intersection of digital and urban space" in Hamburg and "Cultures of Critique" in Lueneburg. His main areas of interest are
media theory,
history of science of ‚mediathinking‘ and the
history and
epistemology of
simulation and
cybernetics. He published the collected protocols and documents of the
Macy Conferences (1946–1953) in two volumes in 2003/2004. In addition to his publishing activity he supervised the publication of the critical writings in individual editions by
Hermann Bahr from 2004 to 2013. Together with
Joseph Vogl, he publishes "sequenzia", a series of media science and science history at the Diaphanes publishing house Zurich/Berlin == Bibliography ==