People

Sensing the Unseen is hosted by the MIT Anthropology Program with the support of the Doctoral Program in History; Anthropology; Science, Technology and Society (HASTS).

All seminar meetings are free and open to the public — no registration is required.

To receive reminders, updates, and announcements via email, please subscribe to our mailing list.

Faculty Organizers

Stefan Helmreich Heather Paxson

Stefan Helmreich
Associate Professor of Anthropology

Stefan Helmreich writes about the cultural meaning of contemporary biology. He has lately become interested in the anthropology of sound.

Heather Paxson
Associate Professor of Anthropology

Heather Paxson is interested in everyday ethics and embodiment. She is writing an ethnography of the artisan cheesemaking "renaissance" in the United States.

Post-Doc

Emily Zeamer
Postdoctoral Fellow

Emily Zeamer’s work centers on how contemporary Thai Buddhists mobilize religious faith as they engage everyday technologies of modernity: forensic crime photography in which ghosts may appear; anti-depressant drugs that fine-tune the spiritual self, cell phones that channel feminine modesty.

Graduate Fellows

Lisa Messeri Tom Schilling

Lisa Messeri
Graduate Student — HASTS Program

Lisa Messeri's dissertation examines how planetary scientists transform planets, both in our solar system and beyond, from remote scientific objects to intimate places capable of human presence.

Tom Schilling
Graduate Student — HASTS Program

Tom Schilling studies the images and institutional rhetoric of nanoscale materials science and engineering. As a former polymer physicist, he is especially interested in computer simulations, electron microscopy, and pedagogy in physical chemistry.