Stephen Duncombe is Professor of Media and Culture at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the Department of Media, Culture and Communications at the Steinhardt School of New York University. He is the author, co-author, editor, and co-editor of ten books, including Æffect: The Affect and Effect of Artistic Activism; The Art of Activism; The Activism of Art; Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy; Notes From Underground: Zines and the Politics of Underground Culture; The Activist Angler, The Bobbed Haired Bandit: Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York; the Cultural Resistance Reader; White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race; and (Open) Utopia.

He has written over 50 articles and essays on the intersection of culture and politics and lectures regularly on the topic around the world, including once debating the impact of arts and activism at the famed Oxford Union. Duncombe is also the creator of TheOpenUtopia.org, an open-access, open-source, web-based edition of Thomas More’s Utopia, the AEffectapp.org, an interactive planning and assessment tool for artistic activists, and the co-creator of Actipedia.org, a user-generated digital database of creative activism case studies.

He has received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching by the State University of New York, the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at NYU’s Gallatin school, and New York University’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Duncombe is a life-long political activist, co-founding a community based advocacy group in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which won an award for “Creative Activism” from the Abbie Hoffman Foundation, and working as an organizer for the NYC chapter of the international direct action group, Reclaim the Streets.

He is co-founder and Research Director of the Center for Artistic Activism, a research and training institute that helps activists to create more like artists and artists to strategize more like activists.