The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences a the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has appointed 14 scholars to its faculty. Seven of the 14 appointees are women.
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ey Flanigan is an assistant professor in the department of political science, with a shared appointment in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing in the department of electrical engineering and computer science. Her research focuses on social choice theory, game theory, algorithms, statistics, and survey methods. Before joining MIT, Dr. Flanigan was a postdoc at Harvard University’s Data Science Initiative. She holds a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Rachel Fraser is an associate professor in the department of linguistics and philosophy. Before coming to MIT, Dr. Fraser taught at the University of Oxford in England. She has research interests in epistemology, language, feminism, aesthetics, and political philosophy. Dr. Fraser holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in philosophical theology and a Ph.D. in philosophy, all from the University of Oxford.
Rebekah Larsen is an assistant professor in the comparative media studies/writing program. A media sociologist, her work uncovers and analyzes understudied media ecosystems, with special attention to sociotechnical change and power relations within these systems. Prior to MIT, Dr. Larsen held a Marie Curie grant at the University of Copenhagen, and was a visiting fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Dr. Larsen is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in technology and society studies. She holds a master’s degree in technology studies and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Cambridge in England.
Becca Lewis is an assistant professor in the comparative media studies/writing program. An interdisciplinary scholar, she examines the rise of right-wing politics in Silicon Valley and online. She previously worked as a researcher at the Data and Society Research Institute, where she published the organization’s flagship reports on media manipulation, disinformation, and right-wing digital media. Dr. Lewis holds a master’s degree in social science from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in communication theory and research from Stanford University.
Bar Luzon is an assistant professor in the department of linguistics and philosophy. Before coming to MIT, she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the philosophy department at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She works in the philosophy of mind and language, metaphysics, and epistemology. Dr. Luzon completed a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 2017 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from New York University.
Angela Saini joins the comparative media studies/writing program as an assistant professor. A science journalist and author, she presents television and radio documentaries for the British Broadcasting Corporation. She has published four books including Superior: The Return of Race Science (Beacon Press, 2019) and The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality (Beacon Press, 2024), which was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. She holds a master’s degree in engineering science from the University of Oxford.
Viola Schmitt is an associate professor in the department of linguistics and philosophy. She is a linguist with a special interest in semantics. Her most recent position was as a junior professor at the Humboldt University Berlin. Earlier, she worked as a postdoc and/or lecturer at the Universities of Vienna, Graz, Göttingen, and at the University of California at Los Angeles. She earned her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Vienna.