Alumni - MIT HASTS

Originally called History and Social Study of Science and Technology (HSSST), and renamed to History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS) in 2004, the program has granted 112 doctoral degrees since its inception in 1988. HASTS alumni bring deep intellectual curiosity to their professional lives—whether they are serving in academic positions or making their mark at a public agency or private corporation. Read more about what our alumni are doing after graduation in the News and Alumni Books sections of this website.

Candis Callison

Dissertation: More Information Is Not the Problem: Spinning Climate Change, Vernaculars, and Emergent Forms of Life

Advisor: Michael M.J. Fischer

Degree Awarded: 2010

Current Affiliation: The University of British Columbia

Chihyung Jeon

Dissertation: Technologies of the Operator: Engineering the Pilot in the U.S. and Japan, 1930-1960

Advisor: David Mindell

Degree Awarded: 2010

Current Affiliation: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Sophia Roosth

Dissertation: Crafting Life: A Sensory Ethnography of Fabricated Biologies

Advisor: Stefan Helmreich

Degree Awarded: 2010

Current Affiliation: New York University (NYU)

Alexander Brown

Dissertation: Accidents, Engineering and History at NASA: 1967-2003

Advisor: David Mindell

Degree Awarded: 2009

Current Affiliation: Network for Learning

Kieran Downes

Dissertation: From Enthusiasm to Practice: Users, Systems, and Technology in High-End Audio

Advisor: David Kaiser

Degree Awarded: 2009

Current Affiliation: Downes Guitars, LLC

Richa Kumar

Dissertation: The Yellow Revolution in Malwa: Alternative Arenas of Struggle and the Cultural Politics of Development

Advisor: Kenneth Keniston

Degree Awarded: 2009

Current Affiliation: Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Jamie Pietruska

Dissertation: Propheteering: A Cultural History of Prediction in the Gilded Age

Advisor: Merritt Roe Smith

Degree Awarded: 2009

Current Affiliation: Rutgers University

Etienne Benson

Dissertation: The Wired Wilderness: Electronic Surveillance and Environmental Values in Conservation Biology

Advisor: Harriet Ritvo

Degree Awarded: 2008

Current Affiliation: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Anita Say Chan

Dissertation: The Promiscuity of Freedom: Development and Governance the Age of Neoliberal Networks

Advisor: Sherry Turkle

Degree Awarded: 2008

Current Affiliation: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Esra Ozkan

Dissertation: Executive Coaching: Crafting a Versatile Self in Corporate America

Advisor: Michael M.J. Fischer

Degree Awarded: 2008

Current Affiliation: Google

Anya Zilberstein

Dissertation: Planting Improvement: The Rhetoric and Practice of Scientific Agriculture in Northern British America, 1670-1820

Advisor: Harriet Ritvo

Degree Awarded: 2008

Current Affiliation: Concordia University

Nathan Greenslit

Dissertation: Pharmaceutical Relationships: Intersections of Illness, Fantasy andCapital in the Age of Direct-to-Consumer Marketing

Advisor: Michael M.J. Fischer

Degree Awarded: 2007

Current Affiliation: Berklee

Margaret (Meg) Hiesinger Handler

Dissertation: Those Who Don't Know: Modernity, Risk, and Transition in Hanoi's Local Markets

Advisor: Deborah Fitzgerlad

Degree Awarded: 2007

Current Affiliation: The Human Nature Center

Natasha Myers

Dissertation: Modeling Proteins, Making Scientists: An Ethnography of Pedagogy and Visual Cultures in Contemporary Structural Biology

Advisor: Stefan Helmreich

Degree Awarded: 2007

Current Affiliation: York University

Anne Pollock

Dissertation: Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference

Advisor: David Jones

Degree Awarded: 2007

Current Affiliation: King's College London

Peter Shulman

Dissertation: Empire of Energy: Environment, Geopolitics, and American Technology before the Age of Oil

Advisor: David Kaiser

Degree Awarded: 2007

Current Affiliation: Case Western Reserve University

Hyun Gyung Im

Dissertation: Temporal Coordination in Distributed Work

Advisor: Joanne Yates

Degree Awarded: 2006

Current Affiliation: Seoul National University Asia Center

Jenny Leigh Smith

Dissertation: The Soviet Farm Complex: Industrial Agriculture in a Socialist Context, 1946-1965

Advisor: Deborah Fitzgerlad

Degree Awarded: 2006

Current Affiliation: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Livia Wick

Dissertation: Making Lives Under Closure: Birth and Medicine in Palestine's Waiting Zones

Advisor: Michael M.J. Fischer

Degree Awarded: 2006

Current Affiliation: American University of Beirut

Shane Hamilton

Dissertation: Trucking Country: Food Politics and the Transformation of Rural Life in Postwar America

Advisor: Deborah Fitzgerlad

Degree Awarded: 2005

Current Affiliation: University of York

Wen-Hua Kuo

Dissertation: Japan and Taiwan in the Wake of Bio-Globalization: Drugs, Race and Standards

Advisor: Michael M.J. Fischer

Degree Awarded: 2005

Current Affiliation: National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

Pages: 1234567

*Alumni with an asterisk (*) next to their name received a degree from another MIT PhD program, but were advised or co-advised by STS faculty members before the HSSST graduate program was created.

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