Matthew Tiessen

Matthew Tiessen is an Associate Professor in Professional Communication at TMU in the School of Professional Communication. Dr. Tiessen holds a SSHRC Insight Grant in the area of “Digital Economy.” His research focuses on finance and power, nature and flow, and the digital technologies that shape our lives.

Recent publications

Tiessen, M. (in press). “Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), Public Banks, And How To Create A Better World When We Everyone Knows That Money Is Created Out Of Thin Air (Like Fairy Dust).” TOPIA -- Zero Credit: Countering the Dreams of Techno-Finance.

Tiessen, M. (forthcoming). “Creating Escape Places in Toronto’s Don River Valley: pursuing flow-states, “holey spaces,” and ephemeral infrastructure in the contemporary metropolis.” Space & Culture.

Tiessen, M. (2018). “Making Our Way in a World of Our Making: The Anthropocene, the Benefits of Nature, and the Costs of Humanizing the Nonhuman.” In J. Jagodzinski (Ed.), Anthropocene, Ecology, Pedagogy: The Future in Question. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, p. 133-152.

Tiessen, M. (2018). “Our Anthropocene: Geologies, Biologies, Economies and New Pursuits of Profit and Power.” Space & Culture. 21(1), 72-85.

Tiessen, M. (2015). “The Appetites of App-Based Finance.” Cultural Studies, 29(5-6), 869–886.

Tiessen, M., McKelvey, F., L. Simcoe. (2015). “A Consensual Hallucination No More? The Internet as Simulation Machine.” European Journal of Cultural Studies (EJCS), 18(4), 577-94.

Tiessen, M. (2014). “Giving Credit Where Credit’s Due: Making Visible the Ex Nihilo Dimensions of Money’s ‘Agency.’” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (special issue on “The Financialized Imagination and Beyond”). 30-31 (Fall 2013/Spring 2014), 290-300.

Tiessen, M. (2014). “Coding the (Digital) Flows: Debt-by-Design and the Econo-Blogospheres’ Transparency-Driven Infowar.” Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies. 14(1), 50-61.

Tiessen, M. (2014). “Gamed Agencies: Affectively Modulating our Screen-Based Digital Futures” In M. Fuchs, N. Schrape, S. Fizek and P. Ruffino (Eds.), Rethinking Gamification. The Gamification Lab and the Hybrid Publishing Lab at the Centre for Digital Cultures, Lüneburg, Germany: Meson Press, p. 251-69.

Tiessen, M. (2014). "Deleuze, Guattari, and the Modulation of Education Policy: FinLit and the Breeding of Financialized Subjects and Subjectivities." In J. Wallin and M. Carlin (Eds.), Deleuze & Guattari, Politics and Education. New York: Bloomsbury/Continuum, pp. 141-61.

Sample of supervised ComCult projects

2020 - Katherine Womby; Project-Paper: Single Motherhood, Media, Methods, and Messiness: Exploring Virtual Reality as a Tool for Autobiographical Expression

ComCult Teaching Activities

• CC 8906 Communication and Culture: An Interdisciplinary Approach