Lisa Messeri

Science and Technology (S&T) indelibly shape how we conceptualize and interact with the world around us. Assessing the impact of S&T is not only a technical project, but one that requires social scientific insight. My anthropological research focuses on the norms, aspirations, and consequences of work done by expert communities as they forge new fields of knowledge and invention. My first book, Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds(Duke University Press), considers how “planet” is not only a cosmic concept, but also a humanistic one. My forthcoming book, In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual Reality, Los Angeles, and Fantasies of Technology Otherwise(Duke University Press), seeks to understand how the recent resurgence of virtual reality hinged on a belief that the technology could repair rifts in reality.

Through reading, teaching, and writing, I endeavor to link conversations in sociocultural anthropology with other fields of inquiry, including science and technology studies, media studies, cultural geography, environmental humanities, and history of science and technology.

My research has been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Wired, The Atlantic, Slate, CNN, PBS, and more. I have spoken domestically and internationally at academic institutions, film festivals, and museums.

Selected Publications

2024 (forthcoming). In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual Reality, Los Angeles, and Fantasies of Technology Otherwise. Duke University Press.

2016. Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds. Duke University Press

2022. “Anthropology and/of Virtual Reality.” In Costa, E., P. Lange, N. Haynes, & J. Sinanan (ed) The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology.

2021. “Realities of Illusion: Illusion as a Way of Knowing from Torres Strait to Virtual Reality.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 27(2): 340-359.

2019. “Imagining Feminist Futures on the Small Screen: Inclusion and Care in VR Fictions.” NatureCulture 5. With M. Brandt.

2018. “Greetings from Silicon Beach,” Anthropology News.

2017. “Gestures of Cosmic Relation and the Search for Another Earth.” Environmental Humanities. 

2017. “Resonant Worlds: Cultivating Proximal Encounters in Planetary Science.” American Ethnologist

2017. “Extra-terra Incognita: Martian Maps in the Digital Age.” Social Studies of Science. 

2015. “Beyond the Anthropocene: Un-Earthing an Epoch.” Environment and Society: Advances in Research 6(1). With V. Olson.

2015.  ”The Greatest Missions Never Flown:  Anticipatory Discourse and the Projectory in Technological Communities.”  Technology and Culture 56 (1).  With J. Vertesi. 

2014. “Earth as Analog: The Interdisciplinary Debate and Astronaut Training that took Earth to the Moon.” Astropolitics 12(2-3). 

2010.  ”The Problem With Pluto:  Conflicting Cosmologies and the Classification of Planets.”  Social Studies of Science 40(2).