Axel Volmar is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Collaborative Research Center Media of Cooperation (SFB 1187) at the University of Siegen. From 2014 to 2016, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. His research interests include the history and theory of digital media with links to infrastructures studies and disability studies as well as digital temporalities, auditory media cultures and format studies. His current research project focuses on the histories of audiovisual telecommunications and Instant Messaging. Recent publications include Productive Sounds: Touch-Tone Dialing, the Rise of the Call Center Industry and the Politics of Virtual Voice Assistants, in: Sudmann, Andreas (Hg.): The Democratization of Artificial Intelligence. Net Politics in the Era of Learning Algorithms (transcript 2019) and Format Matters. Standards, Practices, and Politics in Media Cultures (co-edited with Marek Jancovic and Alexandra Schneider, Meson Press 2019).