Martin Irvine is the Founding Director of the graduate program in Communication, Culture & Technology (CCT) and Associate Professor in CCT. He has also served as Associate Vice President for Technology Strategy in the Office of the Vice President and CIO. He has a B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo and M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Professor Irvine has an extensive multidisciplinary background that includes ancient and modern languages and literature, media and communication theory, Internet technologies, intellectual history and semiotics, art history, cultural theory, and the study of visual culture.

Dr. Irvine has been a professor at Georgetown since 1988, and he has also taught at Harvard, Wayne State University, and the University of Virginia. He has been involved in the Internet and higher education since 1991, and set up Georgetown’s first Website, The Labyrinth, in 1993. He has published extensively on literature, literary theory and semiotics, the Internet in higher education, and more recently on contemporary art and visual culture.

Professor Irvine’s recent research and teaching interests include the emerging field of visual culture and the transdisciplinary study of contemporary media and the visual arts. He also teaches courses on the social contexts of media and communication, mediology, and the theory and institutions of contemporary visual art. He is currently working on a project involving the study of the social and economic institutions of contemporary art and the economics of culture. His book chapter, "Work on the Street: Street Art and Visual Culture," will be published in 2011 in A Handbook of Visual Culture (London: Berg). His course syllabuses, lectures, research projects, and work in progress and are available from his web site.

Dr. Irvine is also an active art collector and supporter of several museums and non-profit arts organizations. He founded an art gallery in Washington, D.C., Irvine Contemporary, which features early and mid-career artists in all media. Dr. Irvine participates nationally and internationally in professional activities in the art world, including museum exhibitions and collaborations with international artists and galleries. In 2008, he facilitated the acquisition of Shepard Fairey's iconic "Obama HOPE" portrait by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. He has curated over 50 exhibitions and published several several exhibition catalogs and essays on contemporary artists.