Ari Purnama is Assistant Professor of Screen Media in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University and a Research Fellow in the Department of Art History and Image Studies at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He previously held academic positions as Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon (USA), Visiting Research Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), University Lecturer at the University of Groningen (Netherlands), and Lecturer at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands).

He holds a PhD in Film Studies and a cum laude Research Master's degree in Film and Television Studies, both from the University of Groningen. He is the author of the book Film Style in Indonesian Cinema, 1998-2018: Lighting, Production Design and Camera Movement (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), which received a first book publication award from the Oregon Humanities Center. As a scholar-practitioner, he actively engages in both theory and practice in film and screen media through the creative practice as research methodology. His most recent documentary, Demystifying the North (2021), forthcoming in Screenworks, explores the affective liminal experiences of Global South migrants in Northern Europe.