MIT Anthropology - Faculty Bio - Stefan Helmreich

STEFAN HELMREICH | Curriculum Vitae

DATE: June 2007

EDUCATION

INSTITUTION	DEGREE	DATE
Stanford University	Ph. D.	1995
Stanford University	M.A.	1992
University of California	B.A.	1989

TITLE OF DOCTORAL THESIS:

Anthropology Inside and Outside the Looking-Glass Worlds of Artificial Life.

FELLOWSHIPS AND HONORS

MIT James A. and Ruth Levitan Prize in the Humanities	2006
MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Funding Award.	2005
MIT Dean's Fund for Faculty Development award to support attendance at "Tectonic and Oceanic Processes along the Indian Ocean Ridge System," an international conference at the National Institute of Oceanography in Dona Paula, Goa, India.	2005
MIT Dean's Fund for Faculty Development award to support attendance at the annual meetings of the Society for the Social Study of Science in Paris, France.	2004
MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Funding Award	2004
Individual Research Grant, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.	2003
Diana Forsythe Book Prize, Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology & Computing, American Anthropological Association, for Silicon Second Nature	2001
Nicholas Mullins Award for Outstanding Graduate Scholarship in Science and Technology Studies, given by the Society for Social Studies of Science	1995
Melvin and Joan Lane Graduate Fellowship in the History of Science	1995
Mellon Dissertation Write-up Grant, awarded through Stanford Anthropology	1994
Dissertation Resident Fellowship at the Stanford Humanities Center, 1994-1995	1994
National Science Foundation Dissertation Research Grant	1993

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

2006-2008	Visiting Scholar, Faculty of Social Science, University of Iceland
2004-present	Associate Professor, Anthropology, MIT
2003-2004	Assistant Professor of Anthropology, MIT
2002-2003	Visiting Scholar, Pitzer College, Claremont University Consortium (position held while conducting Wenner-Gren funded research).
1999-2002	Assistant Professor, Science and Society, New York University, John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought, Graduate School of Arts and Science
1997-99	Lecturer in Anthropology, Stanford University Program in Cultures, Ideas, and Values
1996-97	Rockefeller Foundation Humanities External Faculty Fellow, Rutgers University, Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture
1995-96	Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University
1991-92	Teaching Assistant at Stanford University, Department of Anthropology
1987-89	Tutor in Biological Anthropology, University of California Los Angeles

RESEARCH AND RELATED EXPERIENCE

January 19-21, 2005		International Conference on "Tectonic and Oceanic Processes along the Indian Ocean Ridge System," National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, India.
May 23-June 9, 2004		Anthropological fieldwork on Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute ship R/V Atlantis (voyage # AT 11-13), in tandem with Dr. Deborah Kelley's "Fluid Testing of a New Sensor to Monitor Environmental Conditions within the Walls of Active Sulfide Structures." Work included participation in DSV Alvin dive #4020, "Mapping Mothra Hydrothermal Field, Take 2," at 47 56 N 129 06 W on the Endeavour Segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge, waters of the Canadian Exclusive Economic Zone.
May 11-21, 2004		Anthropological fieldwork on University of Rhode Island NSF ship R/V Endeavor (cruise # 393), in tandem with Dr. Brian Binder's "In Situ Pico-Cyanobacterial Growth Rates in The Sargasso Sea Based on Cell-Specific rRNA Measurements."
March 2004		University of Georgia Marine Institute, Sapelo Island, Georgia.
Sept-Dec 2003		Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
June-July 2003		University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii.
Jan-May 2003		Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Moss Landing, California.
April 2002		Asia-Pacific Marine Biotechnology Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii.
July 2001		Symposium on Extremophile Research, Center of Marine Biotechnology, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland.
Sept 2000		International Conference on Marine Biotechnology, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
Jun-Aug 2000		Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Moss Landing, California.
May 1996		Artificial Life Conference, Nara, Japan.
June 1995		Artificial Life Conference, Granada, Spain.
May 1993-Aug 1994		Dissertation research on Artificial Life, at the Santa Fe Institute for the Sciences of Complexity, Santa Fe, New Mexico; conference research in Brussels, Belgium; Donostia, Euskadi; Brighton, United Kingdom.

SEMINARS, COLLOQUIA, ETC.

February and March 2007		Marine Bioprospecting and Biotechnology in Hawaii: Legal Contests and Contexts at Sea. Presented in the Law/Science Seminar Series, Department of Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts. Also presented at the Political Ecology Working Group of the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
December 2006		How the Ocean Got Its Genome: Bodies of Knowledge and Bodies of Water in Marine Microbiology. Presented at the Department of Anthropology, New School University, New York, New York.
November 2006		Thick Accounting, Discussant commentary presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Jose, California; panel: Aggregate.
November 2006		How the Ocean Got Its Genome: Making Meaning out of Microbes in Marine Genomics. Presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Jose, California; panel: Speaking with/for Nature: Conversations with Biologists and their Non-Human Others.
October 2006		Alien Ocean: An Anthropology of the Deep Sea. Presented at the Center for Humanities, Wesleyan University. Middletown, Connecticut.
May 2006		Comment on James Cameron's Aliens of the Deep, Alt-Science, Alt-Religion Group, Professor Debbora Battaglia, convenor, Anthropology Department, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts.
March 2006		An Anthropologist Underwater: Deep-sea Soundscapes, Submarine Cyborgs, and the Idea of Immersion. Presented at the Department of Anthropology, Rice University, Houston, Texas.
November 2005		Varieties of Scientific Experience. Discussant commentary presented at the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC, November 30-December 4; panel: Religion and Science Caught between the Past and the Future.
September 2005		Norbert Wiener and Artificial Life. Guest lecture in MIT Comparative Media Studies Seminar, Subject CMS.21L.434, Science Fiction, Professor Beth Coleman, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
May 2005		"Outline of a Theory of Fieldwork." Presented in Social Science Faculty Seminar, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.
May 2005		"Microcosmic Seas: A Maritime Anthropology of Marine Microbiological Worlds." Presented in Anthropology Faculty Seminar, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.
March 2005		Guest presentation in Program in Science, Technology, and Society Graduate Seminar, STS.360, Ethnography, MIT.
March 2005		Guest lecture in Comparative Media Studies Theory and Method Graduate Seminar, MIT.
February 2005		The Signature of Life: Designing the Astrobiological Imagination. Presented at New Forms of Life: Practices and Consequences of Envisioning Biological Processes, a Joint Workshop at the Kennedy School of Government organized by the Science, Technology and Society Programs at Harvard and MIT.
December 2004		"Doubling Back to Artificial Life" presented as guest lecture, Anthropology 316f: Special Topics in Anthropology - Anthropology of Nature, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA.
November 2004		"Dissolving the Tree of Life" presented as guest lecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering Graduate Seminar, Subject 1.84, Problems in Aquatic Biology and Chemistry, MIT.
August 2004		(Panel organizer with Heather Paxson) Microbiopolitics at the meetings of the Society for the Social Study of Science, Paris, France. Presented paper in panel: "The Microbially Modified Ocean."
June 2004		"Anthropology Underwater: A Report on Deep Submersible Vehicle Alvin Dive $4020, 'Mapping Mothra Hydrothermal Field'" presented on board the Research Vessel Atlantis.
April 2004		"Alien Algae: Colonialism, Culture, and Classification in Hawaii" presented in Coastal Studies Speaker Series, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME.
March 2004		"Kinship with the Sea: An Anthropologist Examines Marine Biology in the Age of Genomics" presented as Invited Dinner Speaker for the Burchard Scholars Program, MIT.
November 2003		"22º45'N, 158ºW" presented at AAA Executive Program Committee Workshop: Affinities Conversations: Siteless Fields at the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, Illinois.
November 2003		"Anthropomorphics". Discussant commentary presented at the panel on After Knowledge: Anthropologies of Hopeful Moments at the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, Illinois.
October 2003		"An Archeology of Artificial Life, Underwater" presented at the Workshop on the History of Artificial Life, Program in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Stanford University.
March 2003		“The Sea that Science Makes: An Anthropological View of Marine Research and Ocean Worlds in the Age of Genomics and Informatics” presented at the Department of Ocean Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz.
March 2003		“Wet Networks: A Biopolitics of Marine Biodiversity and Biotechnology” presented at the Anthropology Program, MIT.
January 2003		“Wet Networks: A Biopolitics of Marine Biodiversity and Biotechnology” presented at the Department of Anthropology, Cornell University.
January 2003		“Wet Networks: A Biopolitics of Marine Biodiversity and Biotechnology” presented at the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.
January 2003		“Wet Networks: A Biopolitics of Marine Biodiversity and Biotechnology” presented at the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University.
December 2002		“Bioterrorism” presented as guest lecture, Anthropology 2:Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology, Pitzer College, Claremont, California.
November 2002		(Panel co-organizer with Pamela Ballinger) Recasting Maritime Anthropology at the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, Louisiana. Presented paper in panel: “Culturing a Microbial Sea: An Anthropology of New Marine Biological Natures for the Ocean”.
November 2002		“Looking Backward through Biogenetics”, Discussant commentary presented at the panel on The Un/Imaginable Futures of Biogenetic Relatedness at the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, LA.
November 2002		“Life@Sea: Networking Marine Biodiversity into Biotech Futures” presented at the Science and Technology Studies Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
October 2002		“The Sea that Science Makes: An Anthropological View of Marine Research and Ocean Worlds in the Age of Genomics and Informatics” presented at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Seminar series, Moss Landing, California.
October 2002		(Panel co-organizer) Edging the Work of Hillel Schwartz into Cultural Studies of Science at the meetings of the Society for Literature and Science, Pasadena, California. Presented paper in panel: “Life’s Signature: Designing the Astrobiological Imagination”
October 2002		“Trees and Seas of Information: Alien Kinship and the Biopolitics of Gene Transfer in Marine Biology and Biotechnology” presented at the Program in Science, Technology and Society, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
May 2002		“Trees and Seas of Information: Alien Kinship and the Biopolitics of Gene Transfer in Marine Biology and Biotechnology” presented at the panel on Transspecific Biopolitics: Animals as Models and as Collaborators at the Society for Cultural Anthropology Biennial Meeting, Montreal, Canada.
April 2002		“Decrypting Race and Class in Spielberg’s A.I.” presented at the panel on Agency and Artifice in Cyberspace at the Critical Cyberculture Studies: Mapping an Evolving Discipline. Co-sponsored by the University of Maryland’s Cyberculture Working Group and the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity, University of Maryland, College Park.
April 2002		“The Promises of Marine Biotechnology” presented at the panel on Ecology and Marine Microbiology at the Fourth Asia-Pacific Marine Biotechnology Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii.
February 2002		“Life@Sea: Networking Marine Biodiversity into Biotech Futures” presented at the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine.
November 2001		“Maritime Anthropology Meets Science Studies” presented at the panel on Science, Technology, and Anthropology at the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC.
November 2001		“Torquing Things Out” presented at the panel on Author MeetsCritics: Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star’s Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences at the meetings of the Society for the Social Study of Science, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
November 2001		“Channeling Extraterritorial Marine Biodiversity” presented at the panel on Envisioning Ecofutures 4: Ordering the Unseen Depths at the meetings of the Society for the Social Study of Science, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
April 2001		“Mangles of Fantastic Anthropologies” a commentary presented at the panel on Confrontations at Sense/Nonsense: Unmaking Language, Boas-Benedict Conference. Department of Anthropology, Columbia University.
November 2000		“Life@Sea: Networking Marine Biodiversity into Biotech Futures” presented at the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, MIT.
September 2000		“Silicon Second Nature: Conceiving Artificial Life and Reprogramming Kinship in a Digital World” presented at the Department of Anthropology, New York University
April-May 2000		“Life@Sea: Networking Marine Biodiversity into Biotech Futures” presented at the School of American Research seminar “Animation and Cessation: Anthropological Perspectives on Changing Definitions of Life and Death in the Context of Biomedicine,” Santa Fe, New Mexico.
November 1999		“Artificial Life, Inc.: Coding and Decoding Commodity Fetishism in a Digital World” presented at the panel on Time and Motion: From Therbligs to Value Added at the 98th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, Illinois.
April 1999		“Silicon Second Nature: Conceiving Artificial Life and Reprogramming Kinship in a Digital World” presented at the Anthropology Program, MIT.
March 1999		“Silicon Second Nature: Conceiving Artificial Life and Reprogramming Kinship in a Digital World” presented at the Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago.
July 1999		(Panel co-organizer with Arantza Etxeberria) Topologies and Typologies of Life in the Digital Domain at the meetings of the International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, Oaxaca, Mexico. Presented paper in panel: “The Dynamics of Digitality in Artificial Life”.
May 1999		“Conceiving Descent: Baloma and Female Fathers”. Lecture,Anthropology 10: Identities: The Self, Belonging, and Destiny, Stanford University.
May 1999		“An Anthropology of Artificial Life” presented at the Wattis Artist-in-Residence Natalie Jeremijenko’s “Real Artificial Life” panel, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts” panel, San Francisco, California.
February 1999		“Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World” presented at the Santa Fe Institute for the Sciences of Complexity, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
December 1998		“Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life and Denaturing Biology” presented at the panel on Investing in Living Matter: Strategic Claims on the Biological at the 97th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia.
December 1998		“In the Web” a discussant commentary presented at the panel on Fieldwork on (the) Line: Impressions of Virtual Ethnology at the 97th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia.
October-November 1998		“Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life and Reprogramming Kinship” presented at the panel on Recalibrating Life: Kinship beyond Biology at the meetings of the Society for the Social Study of Science, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
April 1998		“Simulation, Revelation, Hallucination: Double Visions of Vitality in Artificial Life” presented at the panel on Envisioning Science at Science and the Humanities Revisited, University of California Los Angeles.
March-April 1998		“Kinship in Hypertext: Formulating Fatherhood and Information Flow in Artificial Life” presented at New Directions in Kinship Study: A Core Concept Revisited, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research meeting, Mallorca, Spain.

FIELDS OF INTEREST

Anthropology of Science and Technology
Kinship, Race, and Gender
Cyberculture
Maritime Anthropology
Anthropological Theory

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

American Anthropological Association
American Ethnological Society
Society for Cultural Anthropology
Society for the Social Study of Science

ACTIVITIES AND COMMITTEES

Project Personnel, Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education, a Science and Technology Center, funded by the National Science Foundation, August 2006.
Siegel Prize committee for best MIT student paper in science studies; STS. MIT.
Grant reviewer, National Science Foundation.
Grant Reviewer, Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, Secretaría de Estado de Política Científica y Tecnología, Spain.
Article referee, American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Anthropology Today, Cultural Anthropology, Current Anthropology, Ethnos, Medical Anthropology, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Science as Culture, Social Studies of Science.
Manuscript reviewer, Routledge Press, MIT Press, Palgrave Macmillan, University of California Press, Princeton University Press, Duke University Press.
1999 AES Senior Book Prize Committee, American Ethnological Society.

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