About hasts

MIT's Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) trains scholars to study science and technology as activities situated in social and cultural contexts. HASTS faculty examine expert as well as popular engagement with the processes and products of technological and scientific work, and conduct research across a spectrum of geographical areas and historical periods.

Faculty members from History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society share responsibility for teaching the required graduate courses and for working with students in individual tutorials, reading courses, and dissertation research.

HASTS faculty and students employ historical, ethnographic, and sociological methods and theories to investigate a wide range of topics, including:

cultures of engineering
the making of scientific tools and theories
conventions of laboratory practice
science and technology in military enterprise
the relation of technology to economic institutions
the relation of science and law
the politics of race and science
knowledge-production in biomedicine and life sciences
agricultural and environmental history
science education

Director of Graduate Studies
Harriet Ritvo
Arthur J. Conner Professor of History

Steering Committee
David Kaiser
Director, Program in STS
Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science
Senior Lecturer, Department of Physics
MacVicar Faculty Fellow

Susan Silbey
Head, Anthropology Program
Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of Humanities
Professor of Sociology and Anthropology

Craig S. Wilder
Head, History Faculty
Professor of History

Academic Administrator
Karen Gardner
Phone: 617-253-9759
Email: kgardner@mit.edu

HASTS Main Office
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Room E51-163
MIT
Cambridge, MA 02139
USA

Phone: 617-253-9759
Email: hasts@mit.edu