This fall, six MIT graduate students attended the Constellations – 2024 AHRC International Conference, held from September 16–18 at Robinson College, Cambridge. This prestigious event, supported by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership, brought together doctoral students from leading institutions, including the Open University, Oxford, Cambridge, Cologne University, Australian National University, MIT, and Stockholm University.
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the conference provided a platform for interdisciplinary discussions. The MIT students presented their research, contributing to debates on the theme of Constellations—exploring connections across diverse fields of study. This international event allowed them to showcase their work, forge new global partnerships, and engage in discussions that could lead to exciting collaborative scholarship in the future.
Read on to learn a bit more about them and their research!
The scholars’ participation in ARHC is supported by OGE, CAPD, the School of Humanities, and the School of Architecture.
Mariel Garcia-Montes
Bio: Mariel is a PhD candidate at the History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society program at MIT. Her research examines the ways today’s technologies of control, such as biometrics and malware, interface with governance and technical structures from 20th century Mexico.
Paper Title: “Finding Our Way Together: The Transnational Constellations Behind Surveillance Technology Discovery in Mexico”
Abstract: The world learned about the workings of a surveillance technology designed to be invisible only because of intensive collaborations between human rights activists in Mexico, Canada-based academic researchers, and US-based journalists. This talk explores the transnational constellation of expertise, media advocacy, and care behind one of the most portentous instances of surveillance exposure in recent years.
Ambar Reyes
Bio: Ambar Reyes is a Mexican media researcher. She is a PhD student in STS at MIT. She holds a MSc in Comparative Media Studies from the same institution. Her work revolves around questions of labor, networks, migration, and media. Currently, she is researching modes of community-building and network formation through digital platforms and how these are instrumental for Latin American indigenous migrant delivery workers in the US to forge their narrative distinct from the one assigned to them by broader socio-political forces.
Paper Title: “Collaborative Mapping: Public and Private Technologies in NYC’s Food Delivery Networks”
Abstract: Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, my paper investigates transnational modes of community-building and network formation across time and space and examines how these networks are instrumental for delivery workers in NYC to exercise agency, forge their narrative, and resist platform control by utilizing, resisting, pushing, and extending digital and communication technologies. Marginalized, misrepresented, or ignored by mainstream media, technology allows them to disseminate their stories, and build solidarity networks.
Muhammad E. Feteha
Bio: Muhammad Feteha is a Ph.D. student in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture. He is interested in Islamic intellectual history and historiography and the transformation of education and law in the modern Islamic world. His dissertation examines the reconceptualization of architecture in 19th-century Egypt through the import of the academic discipline of architecture and the European methods of planning, in addition to the substitution of the shariʿa-based laws governing the built environment with the western-inspired zoning and property laws. Prior to joining MIT, Feteha obtained degrees in the History of Islamic Architecture and Philosophy from the American University in Cairo.
Paper Title: “The Caliphate, Salvation, and Messianism in Al-Suyūti’s Conception of History”
Abstract: Jalāl al-Din al-Suyūti (d. 1505 AD) is one of the most influential polymaths of medieval Islam who contributed to numerous disciplines, including history. Al-Suyūti’s history belongs to a style of history writing that dominated the Abrahamic traditions in the medieval period known as salvationist history, which is based on a theological understanding of cosmology and uses historical events as sources for moral lessons. One main task of salvationist historians is to interpret contemporary events to fit within their preconceived grand narratives. The contemporary Syrian historical critic Aziz al-Azmeh points out that this perspective transforms history into genealogy, namely, a succession of one identity in separate moments. Thus, salvationists remove historical events from history and transport them into a perspective of eternity.As this paper illustrates, al-Suyūti uses ‘the caliphate’ (vicegerency) as a supra-historical notion that extends across time: it begins with the creation of Adam as God’s vicegerent; re-emerges with the appointment of Abu Bakr as the Prophet’s vicegerent; extends to the corrupted Abbasid caliphate during al-Suyūti’s time; and ends with the second coming of the Messiah as the reviver of the perfect and final caliphate. Earlier research has shown how al-Suyūti casts the caliphate in a cosmic role by linking the caliph’s well-being and veneration to natural and economic phenomena. Through extending the analysis of the trope of the caliphate in his works on eschatology, I argue that al-Suyuti’s conception of the caliphate could be understood as a Benjaminian constellation that not only links the theological to the political and the natural, but also links ‘the now’ to the past and future.
Diego Cerna-Aragon
Bio: Diego Cerna-Aragon is a STS and media scholar. His doctoral research revolves around questions of legibility of natural resources, circulation of economic ideas, and practices of future-making. Diego holds a BA in Communication from the University of Lima, an SM in Comparative Media Studies from MIT, and an MA in Science and Technology Studies from York University. Before graduate school, Diego spent years working at an international development project in Peru that assisted local governments in the management of mining revenues.
Paper Title: “Orienting Capital: Transformations in the Production of Geological Information during the Peruvian Neoliberal Turn”
Abstract: This paper studies the production of legibility of natural resources in the context of neoliberal transitions. My case study is Peru in the nineties. In this scenario, I observe the transformations in the production of geological knowledge by the Geological, Mining, and Metallurgic Institute of Peru (INGEMMET), an office attached to the Ministry of Energy and Mining. During this period, INGEMMET prioritized the provision of information to “orient” foreign mining investment over the execution of diverse tasks – such as the exploration of specific mineral deposits and research in mining metallurgy.
Examining policy reform documents, annual reports of operations, and other materials, I use this episode as an example of the convergence of scientific practice and neoliberalism. I describe how the role of a scientific government agency changed as the country moved from an economic system of state-led development to a liberal market economy. By foregrounding the production of legibility through media that enable interventions in the environment (e.g., geological maps), I shed light on the operations that take place before capital “hits the ground” – in the case of mining, quite literally.
Nina Wexelblatt
Bio: Nina Wexelblatt is a PhD candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art at MIT. Her research examines artists’ experiments with technologies of feedback, labor automation, and telecommunications in the postwar period. Previously, Nina was a predoctoral fellow at the Getty Research Institute and held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. She holds a BA in Literature from Yale University and an MA from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.
Paper Title: “Constellations in Orbit: Satellite Art and the ‘Open Empire’: 1966-1980”
Abstract: Media artists in the inaugural years of satellite telecommunications saw in it the dawn of a new medium; early proposals included using satellites to host a global library of images, transmit moving images to previously inaccessible locations, and facilitate simultaneous performances on multiple continents. At the same time, this technology offered strategic value during the Cold War, enabling contact between the United States and a constellation of so-called “satellite” theaters around the globe. This talk addresses episodes from the first decade of satellite art projects, 1966-1977, tracing intertwined histories of art, technological development, and the institutional governance of global telecommunications. It examines ways these artists negotiated the affordances of such systems, including questions of access, breakdown, and power as art and information crossed borders.
Additional Scholars In Attendance:
Olivia Houck
