In 2024, eight professors have secured tenure at the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. They include:
- Dwaipayan Banerjee: An Associate Professor in the Science, Technology, and Society program, Banerjee’s work highlights the intellectual contributions of South Asian scientists, engineers, and doctors, challenging conventional understandings of science, technology, and medicine. He has authored two books, "Enduring Cancer" and "Hematologies," with a third, "Computing in the Time of Decolonization," under review at Princeton University Press. His research spans health policies, pandemics, and computing, critically examining global inequalities in scientific and technological practices. Banerjee’s teaching philosophy emphasizes global perspectives and interdisciplinary research, with popular courses like STS.012 (Science in Action) and 21A.504J/STS.086J/WGS.276J (Cultures of Computing). He has significantly contributed to various editorial and MIT committees and has mentored PhD students, enhancing his impact on the academic and global community.
- Kevin Dorst: A 2019 MIT PhD graduate, Dorst is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. His work lies at the intersection of philosophy and behavioral sciences, using mathematical, computational, and empirical methods to study biases and polarization, arguing that people are more rational than often perceived. After earning his doctorate, he was a junior research fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, and an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh before returning to MIT in 2022. He currently holds a Humboldt Research Fellowship at the University of Munich’s Center for Mathematical Philosophy.
- Paloma Duong: An Associate Professor in Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Duong’s research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary Latin American culture, media theory, and critical theory. Her latest book, "Portable Postsocialisms: Cuban Mediascapes after the End of History," explores the evolving Cuban media landscape and the postsocialist condition. Her work has been published in the Latin American Cultural Studies Review, Artistic Margins, and Cuban Counterpoints: Public Scholarship about a Changing Cuba.
- Amy Moran-Thomas: An Associate Professor of Anthropology, Moran-Thomas’s ethnographic research examines how health technologies and ecologies are designed and embodied, often unequally, in everyday life. She earned her PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University in 2012. Her first book, "Traveling with Sugar: Chronicles of a Global Epidemic," provides an anthropological account of diabetes care technologies and their global impact. From 2024-2026, she co-leads a climate and health humanities project, "Sugar Atlas: Counter-Mapping Diabetes from the Caribbean," funded by an ACLS Digital Startup Grant. Her broader research interests include the material culture of chronic diseases, planetary health, intergenerational responsibility, and public anthropology.
- Justin Reich: An Associate Professor in Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Reich is an education researcher focused on the future of learning in a networked world. He directs the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, aiming to design, implement, and study the future of teacher education. He authored "Iterate: The Secret to Innovation in Schools" and "Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education." Reich hosts the TeachLab podcast and offers several online courses on EdX, including 0.504x (Sorting Truth from Fiction: Civic Online Reasoning) and 0.503x (Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices). He is a former fellow and associate professor at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
- Bettina Stoetzer: An Associate Professor of Anthropology, Stoetzer’s cultural anthropology research explores the intersections of ecology, globalization, and social justice in Europe and the US. Her award-winning book, "Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Nature in Berlin," draws on fieldwork with immigrant and refugee communities, ecologists, nature enthusiasts, and other Berlin residents to illustrate how human-environment relationships shape urban citizenship in Europe. She authored "InDifferences: Feminist Theory in Antiracist Criticism" and co-edited "Shock and Awe: War on Words." Stoetzer is currently working on a new project about wildlife mobility, climate change, and border politics in the US and Germany. She teaches courses on cities, race and migration, environmental justice, gender, and climate change. She earned her MA in Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies from the University of Goettingen and her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
- Ariel White: An Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, White studies voting rights, race, the criminal justice system, and bureaucratic behavior. Her research uses large datasets to measure individual experiences and illuminate people’s everyday interactions with the government. Recent projects examine how potential voters respond to punitive government policies like incarceration and immigration control and how people reintegrate into political life afterward. Other studies explore how local election officials treat voters of different ethnicities, how media shapes public conversations, and whether parties face electoral sanctions for nominating minority candidates. Her work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Science, and other outlets.
- Bernardo Zacka: An Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Zacka is a political theorist with an interest in ethnographic methods. His research focuses on how the state is experienced by those who interact with it and those who act on its behalf. His first book, "When the State Meets the Street," explores the everyday moral lives of street-level bureaucrats. His second book project, "Institutional Atmospherics," examines 20th-century episodes where social agencies used architecture and interior design to repair their relationship with citizens, proposing a more ambitious concept of state-society interfaces. Zacka earned his PhD from Harvard’s Department of Government and has been a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is currently on sabbatical at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
