Institute SHASS designates fresh heads for programs and sections in the 2025-2026 term
In the hallowed halls of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), three distinguished scholars have taken on new roles, each bringing their unique expertise to the forefront of their respective fields.
Eden Medina, a renowned authority on the relationship between science, technology, and political change in Latin America, has been appointed as the head of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society. Medina, who earned her PhD from MIT in 2005, is the author of the acclaimed book "Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile" (MIT Press, 2011). This groundbreaking work won the 2012 Edelstein Prize for best book on the history of technology and the 2012 Computer History Museum Prize for best book on the history of computing.
In a separate development, Manduhai Buyandelger, a professor of anthropology, has been appointed as the director of the Program in Women's and Gender Studies. Buyandelger's research focuses on achieving more-integrated (and less-violent) lives for humans and non-humans by examining the politics of multi-species care and exploitation, urbanization, and how diverse material and spiritual realities interact and shape the experiences of different beings. She has written two books on religion, gender, and politics in post-socialist Mongolia: "Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Gender, and Memory in Contemporary Mongolia" (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and "A Thousand Steps to the Parliament: Constructing Electable Women in Mongolia" (University of Chicago Press, 2022).
Buyandelger is also developing an anthro-engineering project with the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) to explore pathways to decarbonization in Mongolia. She offers a transdisciplinary course with NSE, 21A.S01 (Anthro-Engineering: Decarbonization at the Million Person Scale), in collaboration with her colleagues in Mongolia's capital, Ulaanbaatar.
Sandy Alexandre, an associate professor of literature at MIT, has been appointed as the head of MIT Literature for the 2025-26 academic year. Alexandre earned a bachelor's degree in English language and literature from Dartmouth College and a master's and PhD in English from the University of Virginia. Her first book, "The Properties of Violence: Claims to Ownership in Representations of Lynching," uses the history of American lynching violence as a framework to understand matters concerning displacement, property ownership, and the American pastoral ideology in a literary context.
Alexandre's work explores how literature envisions ecologies of people, places, and objects as recurring echoes of racial violence, resonating across the long arc of U.S. history. Her research focuses on late 19th-century to present-day Black American literature and culture. In the 2024-25 academic year, Alexandre served as co-head of the section.
In addition to her academic pursuits, Alexandre has co-curated the exhibition "How to Design a Revolution: The Chilean Road to Design," which opened in 2023 at the Centro Cultural La Moneda in Santiago, Chile, and is currently on display at the design museum Disseny Hub in Barcelona, Spain.
The appointments of Medina, Buyandelger, and Alexandre underscore MIT's commitment to fostering a diverse and vibrant intellectual community, with scholars at the forefront of their respective fields guiding the next generation of thinkers and innovators.
