Susanna Paasonen is professor of Media Studies. After finishing her PhD in Media Studies in Turku in 2002 she acted as lecturer in Media Culture at University of Tampere (2003), as an Academy of Finland postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Women's Studies in Turku (2004-5), as senior research associate in Digital Culture at University of Jyväskylä (2005-7), as researcher at the Collegium for Advanced Studies at University of Helsinki (2007-10) and as professor of Digital Culture at Jyväskylä (2010-11) before starting in her current post in August 2011. Paasonen was appointed docent in Media Culture at University of Tampere in 2004 and as docent in Feminist Media Studies in Turku in 2006.

She was the first recipient of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters' Jutikkala Award in Humanities in 2011 and the Association of Internet Researchers' Nancy Baym Annual Book Award in 2020. She spent part of her sabbatical research leave in 2016 as visiting scholar at MIT's department of Comparative Media Studies and at Microsoft Research New England's Social Media Collective and was briefly visiting professor at University of Florence during the covid-19 spring of 2020, as well as a Hunt-Simes Visiting Chair in Sexuality Studies at University of Sydney in 2022.

With an interest in studies of networked media, affect, sexuality, and media theory, Paasonen is the PI of the research consortium, "Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture" (IDA, 2019-2022/25), funded by The Strategic Research Council (SRC).

She's the author of e.g. the author of Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography (MIT Press 2011), Many Splendored Things: Thinking Sex and Play (Goldsmiths Press 2018), Not Safe for Work: Sex, Humor, and Risk in Social Media (with Kylie Jarrett and Ben Light, MITP 2019),  Who's Laughing Now? Feminist Tactics in Social Media (with Jenny Sundén, MITP 2020), Objectification: On the Difference Between Sex and Sexism (with Feona Attwood, Alan McKee, John Mercer and Clarissa Smith, Routledge 2020), Distracted, Frustrated, Bored: Affective Formations in Networked Media (MITP 2021) and TechnoPharmacology (with Joshua Neves, Aleena Chia and Ravi Sundaram, University of Minnesota Press 2022).

Paasonen is co-editor of  e.g. Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture (with Kaarina Nikunen and Laura Saarenmaa, Berg 2007), Working with Affect in Feminist Readings: Disturbing Differences (with Marianne Liljeström, Routledge 2010) and Networked Affect (with Ken Hillis and Michael Petit, MIT Press 2015) and serves on the editorial boards member of the journals New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, Sexualities, Porn Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Capacious, Postmodern Culture, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and Monstrum.