Slavko Kacunko (Ph.D., Dr. habil.) is Art Historian and Philosopher. His recent position was Professor for Art History and Visual Culture at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies (IKK), University of Copenhagen (August 2011-November 2019). He is considered a pioneer of the interdisciplinary field of media art history studies. He authored the first Ph.D. dissertation on a German video artist awarded with the DRUPA-prize 2000 (“Art history pioneer achievement in the field of video art”). His habilitation “Closed Circuit Videoinstallationen” is (2004) referred to as a “milestone in the history of media art” and “the pivotal source book for the decades to come”, used ever since world-wide as an academic and teaching resource, cited over 1.000 times to date. Subsequent research in cultures of immediacy, history of archaeology and -aesthetics, “liveness”, “framings” and today´s “generation Like” resulted in 14 monographs and over 60 academic papers in German, English and Croatian, translated into Polish, Japanese, Italian and Spanish. Kacunko (co-)organized international collaborative research projects, and -conferences as well as UNESCO- and private supported art-science projects since 2001. Since 2014 he is elected member of “Academia Europaea”. Key foci of Kacunkos scientific profile are Processual Arts (video, performance, installation, net art), Global Contemporary Art and Visual and Material Studies. For his interdisciplinary approaches in Art History and Media Studies he received international recognition. 

Kacunko was born in Osijek in Croatia, where he studied art history, philosophy and pedagogy. He moved to Germany in 1993 and received a Ph.D. from the University of Düsseldorf (1999). His Ph.D. dissertation (summa cum laude) traces the origins of video, installation and performance art and was the first dissertation on a German video artist. He received the post-doctoral qualification (habilitation with venia legendi for Art History) from the University of Osnabrück with a thesis on the History and Theory of Media Art (2006).