Ollivier Dyens is Founder and co-Director of Building 21, an open lab dedicated to rethinking higher education in the 21st century. From 2013-2018, he was Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) at McGill University where he is currently Full Professor in the Department of littératures de langue française, de traduction et de création.

Ollivier Dyens is the author of thirteen books including La terreur et le sublime, published by XYZ, La Condition inhumaine, published by les Éditions Flammarion in Paris, and Metal and Flesh: The Evolution of Man, Technology Takes Over, published by MIT Press. Among his other publications are, Les murs des planètes, suivi de la cathédrale aveugle (VLB Éditeur), short listed for the Revue Estuaire/Terrasses St-Denis prize for Poetry, Continent X, Vertige du Nouvel Occident (VLB Éditeur), long listed for the prix Roberval, and The Profane Earth (Mansfield Press), long listed for the ReLit Award. He has lectured in Europe, the United States and Canada. He was guest speaker at the Parson School of Design, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City, at the Maryland Institute College of Art, at the Centre Européen de Technoculture, at Ars Electronia, at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, etc. His digital artwork has been exhibited in Brazil, Canada, France, Venezuela, Germany, Argentina and the United States.

His twelfth book, Virus, Parasites et Ordinateurs was published by the Presses de l'Université de Montréal in 2015 is available for free online.

Ollivier Dyens also sat on the board of Québec’s Conseil supérieur de l’éducation from 2011 to 2015.