Katherine Contess is a Ph.D. Student in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.  She holds an M.A. in English from CUNY Brooklyn College and a B.A. in English and International Comparative Studies from Duke University.  Her work is within television studies, digital media studies, and the history of technology.

Benjamin Driver is a PhD candidate in the department of classics at Brown University writing a dissertation which is for now cumbersomely entitled "Per Fraudem Terram Movere: Encomium, Catasterism, and Apotheosis via Intertextuality in the Copernican Revolution." The dissertation is a literary history covering the years 1460-1810 that investigates how panegyrical peritexts (mostly dedicatory epistles and poems) of Latin astronomical treatises lent credence to new discoveries by allusively coöpting classical authorities. In his free time he enjoys reading, hiking, looking at birds, and playing video games.

Jonathan MacDonald is a student in the PhD Program in American Studies at Brown. He holds an MA in History from Virginia Tech, where he completed a thesis titled "Reel Guidance: Midcentury Classroom Films and Adolescent Adjustment." He is interested in the relationship between publics and experts in the 20th century United States, particularly how ideas from the social and behavioral sciences influenced (and continue to influence) common beliefs about personality, behavior, etiquette, citizenship, civic responsibility, and narratives of "success."

David is a PhD student in history. His research interests revolve around the environmental history of Nigeria and West Africa. He is interested in how the production of scientific knowledge about coastal Nigeria led to socio-environmental dichotomies in the history of the coast and the hinterland, the influence of this phenomenon on the socio-economic mapping of coastal communities, and how the logic and perceptions generated affected policy, people, humans, and non-humans. David is also interested in marine science, aquatic animals, and their place in the history of coastal communities and the hinterlands of Nigeria and West Africa.

Lillian Tsay is a Ph.D student of the History Department. Her primary research interests lie in the history of the food industry in the Japanese Empire with a focus on sugar and sweets businesses. She is specifically interested in the relationship between food and bodily senses, food science and nutrition, and the history of businesses and capitalism.

Samia Cohen (she or they) is a writer, public scholar, and creative practitioner with an interest in environmental storytelling, urban environmental history, and transgender studies. She is at work on a book manuscript, titled Watershed Metropolis: the Providence River and its lifeworlds, that explores her natal city’s hydrological legacy and the life that free-flowing water has supported across time. She also writes in an auto-theoretical vein on trans embodiment in relation to changing landscapes. Samia completed her PhD in American Studies, with a certificate in STS, at Brown University in 2024.

Kristen Iemma is a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She earned her PhD in American Studies with a certificate in STS at Brown University. She also holds an MA in Public Humanities from Brown University and an MS in Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute. Her research addresses twentieth and twenty-first century state record keeping practices in the U.S. and contends with questions of epistemology, representation, empire, and historiography. She has worked as an archivist at a number of museums and cultural institutions. 

Théo Lepage-Richer is a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology at the University of Toronto. He received his PhD in MCM, with a certificate in STS, with a project on the history and epistemology of a machine learning model called “neural networks,” with a specific focus on the development of a neural imaginary throughout the 20th century. Bringing together turn-of-the-century neurophysiology, post-war cybernetics, and late 20th century computer science, Théo’s dissertation attends to the ways the artificialization of intelligence partakes in the biopolitical management and uneven distribution of agential, intellectual, and vital potential.