DR. AYMAR JÈAN “AJ” ESCOFFERY (fka Aymar Jean Christian) is the Margaret Walker Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, Faculty Director of the MS in Leadership for Creative Enterprises, and Faculty Associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center.
He is the author of Open TV: Innovation Beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Television (NYU Press, 2018), Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal our Culture (MIT Press, 2025), and The Cookout: A Guide to AI: Ancestral Intelligence(For the Birds Trapped in Airports, 2025). He is the co-author of Media Reparations (Polity, forthcoming) and Beyond the Screen: A Decade of Unfiltered Storytelling(For the Birds Trapped in Airports, 2025), which chronicles 10 years of his OTV project. His research & development has been supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, MacArthur Foundation, and Wallace Foundation, among others.
He serves on the boards of The Impact Guild, Future Film Coalition, OTV, Communication, Culture & Critique, and Television & New Media.
From 2008 to 2014 he ran the blog Televisual focused on the evolution of TV and internet.
He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
Bio as of 7/2026
Photo by Felton Kizer