Visitors and Postdoctoral Associates

CMS/W takes pride in welcoming young and established scholars and helping them advance their own work by pairing them with one of our research groups. Past visitors have played key roles in our speaker series, contributed to masters student theses, and established long-term ties between MIT and other institutions.

Find out how how to join us as a visiting scholar or postdoctoral associate

Nancy Baym Research Affiliate nbaym@mit.edu		Nancy Baym is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, a couple of blocks to the east of CMS/W's haunts. Her work focuses on interpersonal relationships and new technologies. She is the author of Personal Connections in the Digital Age (Polity 2010), Internet Inquiry (co-authored with Annette Markham) (Sage 2009) and Tune In, Log On: Soaps Fandom and Online Community (Sage 1999). Her current research is about musicians' relationships with audiences and how social media affect them.
Karim Ben Khelifa ICE Lab/CAST Visiting Artist karim_bk@mit.edu		Karim Ben Khelifa is an award-winning photojournalist who has freelanced regularly for Time Magazine, Vanity Fair, Le Monde, Stern, and GEO, among others. Ben Khelifa is widely known for his coverage of conflicts in the Middle East, especially the Iraq and Afghan wars. He has worked in more than 80 countries and territories and has had exhibitions on four continents. Ben Khelifa is a member of the advisory board of the Observatory for Photojournalism of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. He is part of the committee that nominates photographers for the World Press Photo Foundation's prestigious Joop Swart Masterclass. In 2012, Ben Khelifa was named the Carroll Binder Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, where he has given talks and lectures in different schools of Harvard University. He is currently a Visiting Artist with CMS/W's Imagination, Computation, and Expression Lab and the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology.
Angela Chang Visiting Scholar anjchang@gmail.com		Angela is a practicing artist and designer researching how interfaces can enhance collocated collaboration. Her current focus is developing interfaces that enable parents to become better storytellers to young children. She also creates media, textiles, devices, and systems that heighten people’s presence to improve communication, education, and artistic expression. Angela received an SB in Mechanical Engineering at MIT, and her Masters and PhD at the MIT Media Lab in Media Arts and Sciences. Her research in synesthesia led her to develop devices that translated touch through remote communication devices. She helped developed haptic technology and prototyped concept phones at Motorola. She is an inventor on several tactile interface patents. She also identified how parents touch and gesture within storybooks to facilitate emergent literacy learning during storytelling. She is interested in building sensorial interfaces and storytelling experiences that help people increase their sense of common ground. Currently she is a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Trope Tank, and an Affiliated Faculty member at Emerson College in Boston, MA.
Katerina Cizek MIT Visiting Artist kcizek@yahoo.com		Director of the National Film Board of Canada’s multi-year HIGHRISE project, Katerina Cizek is an Emmy-winning documentary-maker working across multiple media platforms. Prior to HIGHRISE, she worked as the NFB’s Filmmaker in Residence. Her work has documented the digital revolution and has itself become part of the movement. For more information on the MIT Visiting Artists Program, visit Arts@MIT.
Sara Colombo Postdoctoral Fellow scolombo@mit.edu
Callum Cooper Visiting Scholar callumc@mit.edu		Callum Cooper is an artist and filmmaker. His work covers a spectrum of the moving image from traditional, linear filmmaking to interactive technology driven artworks. Cooper’s works are participatory in either their process, content or viewing experience. His linear films have screened internationally including Sundance 2011 (nominated best narrative short film) and Sundance 2013 (Jury Prize Focus Forward, short documentary). Cooper’s non-linear work has been extensively exhibited including the Barbican Centre London (2011) and Toronto International Film Festival (2012).
Harvey Fan Visiting Scholar ygfan@mit.edu
Mary Harrod Visiting Assistant Professor mgmh@mit.edu
Sun-ha Hong Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow sunha@mit.edu		Sun-ha Hong analyses how new media and its data become invested with ideals of precision, objectivity and truth – especially through aesthetic, speculative, and otherwise apparently non-rational means. He works to produce critical, historically informed diagnoses of the contemporary faith in "raw" data, sensing machines, and algorithmic decision-making, and of their public promotion as the next great leap towards objective knowledge. At MIT, he is working on completing one book project and beginning another. The first, "Data Epistemologies / Surveillance and Uncertainty", analyses the changing boundaries of the known, the probable and the unknowable vis-à-vis early twenty-first century technologies of state "dragnet" surveillance and self-tracking. The second, "A Speculative Literature for a Data-Driven Society", examines the genealogy of our imaginations about data, innovation and surveillance – from science fiction of the early twentieth century to experimental prototypes of ‘big’ data in the present day. He received his Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. His work has been published through journals like First Monday and European Journal of Cultural Studies. His CV and writing are available at: http://sunhahong.org
Jesper Juul Visiting Assistant Professor jesperj@mit.edu		Jesper Juul has been working with the development of video game theory since the late 1990′s. His book Half-Real on video game theory was published by MIT press in 2005. His most recent book "The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games" was published in the Spring of 2013. He maintains the blog The Ludologist on “game research and other important things”.
Quanlin Li Visiting Professor liquanln@mit.edu		Quanlin Li’s teaching and research are mainly about media industry, cultural industry management, Taiwan-Fujian culture, theory of art, and Chinese modern literature. Li is now a Professor, Supervisor of Ph.D. candidates and Postgraduate students in the colleges of Literature and Media at Fujian Normal University, and he was a visiting associate professor at Taiwan University in 2013. He is also the general secretary of the Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Overseas Chinese Literature Research Association in Fujian Province. He received his Ph.D. in Fujian Normal University of China. Professor Li has been awarded several prizes and funding by the Chinese government and academic institutions for contributions he made in teaching and research. He has published dozens of research papers and five academic books.
Isabelle Raynauld Visiting Scholar raynauld@mit.edu
Wang Hongliang Visiting Scholar hl_w2016@mit.edu		Wang Hongliang is an associate professor in the Communication University of China. He got his Ph.D. at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He primarily teaches art and design. His research interests mainly lie on visual culture studies, visual communication, and media design. His publications include Transmutation and Alienation—The way and development stage of visual marketing and contemporary art cooperation (Modern Communication, 2015) and The Development and Forecast of Chinese Design: General Report on Design Industry Development of China (2014-2015) (China Social Sciences Academic Press, 2015).
Christopher Weaver Research Scientist and Lecturer csweaver@mit.edu		Chris Weaver teaches in Materials Science and Engineering and Comparative Media Studies/Writing. He received his S.M. from MIT and was the initial Daltry scholar at Wesleyan University, where he earned dual master's degrees in Japanese and Computer Science and a CAS Doctoral Degree in Japanese Ethnomusicology and Physics. The former Director of Technology Forecasting for ABC and Chief Engineer to the Subcommittee on Communications to the US Congress, he founded Bethesda Softworks, a leading software company that is credited with the development of physics-based sports simulation and creating the original John Madden Football for Electronic Arts as well as the Elder Scrolls role-playing series. He has numerous patents in interactive media, security, broadband and telecommunications engineering. A former member of the Architecture Machine Group and Fellow of the Research Program on Communications Policy, he is currently a Board Member of the Communications Technology Roadmap Group in the Microphotonics Center at MIT.
Wenxuan Wu Visiting Scholar wenxuan@mit.edu		Wenxuan Wu is an assistant professor in Shenzhen University of China, where she has focused on design fundamentals, visual communication and cross-media design systems. She is an independent designer focused on design strategy, user interface, branding and interactive advertising design. In her research field, she has published two books and has authored articles and chapters in edited volumes. She currently has a national grant for Advertising in New Formats and Media Design from Chinese government. Wenxuan Wu holds a BA in Advertising Design from University of South Wales, UK and an MA in Communication from University of Westminster, London.