Patrick Keilty

Patrick Keilty is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Professor Keilty's research interests focus on the politics of digital infrastructures in the sex industries and the materiality of sexual media. He has published on embodiment and technology, data science, the history of technology, cataloging, archives, design and experience, graphic design, temporality, and metadata. His work spans visual studies, science and technology studies, information studies, media studies, political economy, critical theory, and theories of gender, sexuality, and race. His research projects have been supported by multiple grants from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). His writing has appeared in Feminist Media Studies; Information Society; Journal of Documentation; Porn Studies; Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience; Uncertain Archives (MIT Press, 2021), and elsewhere. His editorial work includes Queer Data Studies (University of Washington Press, 2023); co-lead editor of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience (2017 – 2019); Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader (Litwin Books, 2013); the “Traversing Technology” special issue of Scholar and Feminist Online; the “Reconfiguring Race, Gender, and Sexuality” special issue of Library Trends; and the forthcoming Handbook of Adult Film and Media (Intellect, 2025). He is currently writing a monograph about the politics of technology in the sex industries. 

Professor Keilty was previously co-chair of the Adult Film and Media SIG in the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) from 2020 – 2023, archives director of UofT's Sexual Representation Collection from 2018 - 2023, and co-lead editor for Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience from 2017 - 2019. For his work with Catalyst, he was a co-recipient of the 2020 Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Infrastructure Award. In 2017, he was the co-recipient of The J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award from the Society of American Archivists as a co-organizer of “Guerrilla Archiving," an effort to save U.S. environmental data. Professor Keilty is a regular commentator on issues related to the sex industries or emerging technologies in international media, including The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, Vice, CBC Radio, KCBS, CTV, NPR, and elsewhere. 

In addition to his primary appointments, Professor Keilty is a faculty member at University College, affiliated with the Women and Gender Studies Institute, and member of the Technoscience Research Unit. He teaches courses on technology studies, digital theory, feminist and queer studies, information infrastructures, and cinema studies. He holds a PhD in Information Studies, concentration in Women's Studies (now Gender Studies), from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has lived in Toronto since 2012, and is originally from Alta Loma, California. Prior to academia, he worked in libraries and archives in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and London, UK.

Check out what he's reading on Goodreads.