Lana Cook, Ph.D. is Associate Director of the
MIT Systems Awareness Lab. Her research explores the use of aesthetics and narrative forms to express emergent sensory, affective and cognitive awareness across individual, relational, and collective levels. Prior, Lana has worked as a strategist at MIT Open Learning, incubating new initiatives in education, including the Refugee Action Hub (ReACT) and Emerging Talent programs. Lana earned a doctorate in English at Northeastern University, with a focus on contemporary American literature, cinema studies and visual culture, where she was a 2014 Humanities Center Fellow investing different iterations and meanings of virality. She received her bachelor’s from University of New Hampshire in English and Philosophy. She is currently writing on a book on the history of the women of the psychedelic sixties. Her work appears in
Configurations (John Hopkins University Press),
Chacruna,
Forced Migration Review (University of Oxford) and other venues.
