He is a philosopher who is studying, designing, curating, and writing about complex urban systems, political economies of data and infrastructure, visual culture and aesthetics, and Southeast Asian colonial-scientific history.

Etienne Turpin obtained a Bachelor of Humanities (2003), College of the Humanities, Carleton University, Canada; a Master of Arts in Philosophy (2005), University of Ottawa, Canada; and PhD in Philosophy (2010), Department of Theory & Policy Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada.

He is editor of Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science, and Philosophy (Open Humanities Press, 2013); and, co-editor of Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments, and Epistemologies (Open Humanities Press, 2015), and Jakarta: Architecture + Adaptation (Universitas Indonesia Press, 2013).

He has taught design research and architecture theory at the Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning, University of Michigan; the College of Environmental Design, University of California Berkeley; and the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, & Design, University of Toronto.