Since 2005 Erhard Schüttpelz is professor for Media Theory at Universität Siegen. He completed German, English and Ethnology studies in Exeter, Oxford, and Cologne and wrote his thesis in Bonn. Subsequently, he went to Columbia University with a Feodor-Lynen-Scholarship of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung and was academic researcher at the SFB 'Medien und kulturelle Kommunikation' at the Universität Köln. In 2003, he submitted his habilitation at the Universität Konstanz, where he was scientific coordinator at the research centre 'Kulturtheorie und Theorie des politischen Imaginären' and completed a research residence at the IFK (Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften) in Vienna.

His research focuses on postcolonial literature and media-history of globalized modernity (habilitation treatise, Constance 2003: Die Moderne im Spiegel des Primitiven); history of science of media-theory and ethnology, linguistics and media-theory of rhetoric (dissertation, Bonn 1994: Figuren der Rede. Zur Theorie der rhetorischen Figur). He is the author of Die Moderne im Spiegel des Primitiven. Weltliteratur und Ethnologie 1870-1960 (2005) and editor of Akteur-Medien-Theorie (2013), Trancemedien und Neue Medien um 1900. Ein anderer Blick auf die Moderne (2009) among others.