Rainer Winter is Professor of Media and Cultural Theory since 2001 and Head of the Institute of Media and Communications at Alpen Adria-Universitaet Klagenfurt in Austria. He is Chair of the Section “Sociology of Media and Communications” of the German Society of Sociology. He completed his habilitation treatise in Sociology at Technical University of Aachen (Germany). He holds a doctoral degree in Sociology, a Master of Arts degree in Sociology and Philosophy and a Diploma in Psychology from the University of Trier (Germany). In 2010 he taught as a Visiting Professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing and at Shanghai International Studies University. Since 2012 he is Adjunct Professor at Charles Sturt University in Sydney.

Rainer Winter is the (co-)author of 8 and (co-)editor of more than 20 books, including Die Kunst des Eigensinns. Cultural Studies als Kritik der Macht (2001), Global America? The Cultural Consequences of Globalization (2003; German Translation 2003; Chinese Translation 2012), Widerstand im Netz (2010) and Die Zukunft der Cultural Studies (2011, Chinese Translation 2014). He is the (co-)editor of four book series, f.e. Cultural Studies (Bielefeld: transcript) with more than 40 books since 2001.

His current research projects are: “HipHop Music, Social Crisis and Democracy in Mali and Senegal” (YouTube: “HipHop au Mali: Movement de Démocratie”, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), “Performigrations: People Are the Territory” (www.performigrations.eu) and “CROSMOS” (crosmos.aau.at).