A theorist, activist, and public intellectual, Parr is working at the intersection of political philosophy, cultural criticism, environmentalism, and social theory. She is the Director of the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati. She has written extensively on environmental politics, memorialization, contemporary art and cultural practices. She is the author of The Wrath of Capital (Columbia UP, 2013), Hijacking Sustainability (MIT Press, 2009), Deleuze and Memorial Culture (Edinburgh UP, 2008), and Exploring the Work of Leonardo da Vinci Within the Context of Contemporary Philosophical Thought and Art (Edwin, 2003). She is the editor of The Deleuze Dictionary (Columbia UP, 2005 & 2010), co-editor with Michael Zaretsky of New Directions in Sustainable Design (Routledge, 2010) and with Ian Buchanan she edited Deleuze and the Contemporary World (Edinburgh UP, 2006).
She has delivered over 30 keynotes and invited talks and published more than 30 articles and essays for scholarly journals and popular media outlets such as, Theory, Culture, and Society and Al Jazeera opinion pages. Her work has been cited in numerous scholarly publications ranging from the disciplines of philosophy, art criticism, architectural theory, cinema studies, sociology, political theory, and English.
She currently serves as a UNESCO water co-chair and has been a fellow at the Taft Research Center. She was the 2011 recipient of UC’s Rieveschl Award for creative and/or scholarly work. She is one of the founding editors of the online journal Drain: Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture and she serves on the editorial boards of The Disposable Life Series, Design Philosophy, and the International Journal of Sociology.
