Latest news…

June 2023
Invited to join the SETI Post-Detection Hub. The Hub is an initiative of the UK SETI Research Network (UKSRN), jointly hosted by the University of St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science, the Centre for Global Law and Governance, and the Durham Law School.

May 2021
Published “Meditation on Death” in Lithuanian Space Agency: Annual Report No. 1 for the Lithuanian Space Agency’s (LSA) program Planet of People at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

December 2020
Interviewed for Flash Forward podcast episode on contact “Is Anybody Out There?

November 2020
Astronomy Magazine interview “The lonely universe: Is life on Earth just a lucky fluke?

July 2020
Published “A Guided Meditation for Connecting to the Cosmos” in Human Parts.

February 2020
Published “Interstellar.” In the open access book Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon, edited by Cymene Howe and Anand Pandian. Punctum Books.

January 2020
New sponsor for University of Victoria research affiliation: Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, Department of Anthropology. Victoria, BC, Canada.

November 2019
Elected to the SETI Permanent Committee, International Academy of Astronautics.

Invited to join the Astrosociology Research Institute‘s Board of Advisors.

Held a roundtable on space ethics called: “No ‘Planet B’: Multiplanetary Ethics in the Anthropocene,” for joint Canadian Anthropology Society Annual Meeting & 118th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Vancouver, British Columbia. Organized with Taylor Genovese (Arizona State University).

October 2019
SETI and Post-Detection: Towards A New Research Roadmap” was presented by our main author Kathryn Denning during the 48th IAA Symposium On The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence at the 70th International Astronautical Congress in Washington, D.C. The paper was written with co-authors Anamaria Berea, Klara Anna Capova, Duncan Forgan, Eric Korpela, Jill C. Tarter, and Leslie I. Tennen.

July 2019
Founding board member of the JustSpace Alliance. Our mission is to advocate for a more inclusive and ethical future in space, and to harness visions of tomorrow for a more just and equitable world today.

Submitted “The Social Sciences Interdisciplinarity for Astronomy and Astrophysics – Lessons from the History of NASA and Related Fields.” An Activity, Project or State of the Profession Consideration (APC) white paper in the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics (Astro2020) for The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. With Anamaria Berea, Kathryn Denning, Monica Vidaurri, Kimberly Arcand, Jillian Bellovary, Arsev Umur Aydinoglu, Mark Lupisella.

June 2019
The Great Colonization Debate.” published in the journal Futures. With Kelly C.Smith, Keith Abney, Gregory Anderson, Linda Billings, Carl L. Devito, Brian Patrick Green, Alan R. Johnson, Lori Marino, Gonzalo Munevar, Adam Potthast, James S. J. Schwartz, Koji Tachibana, John W. Traphagan, Sher Wells-Jensen.

February 2019
Politics of Planetary Reproduction and the Children of Other Worlds.” published in the journal Futures. Preprint available on SocArXiv.

December 2018
First Contact with Possible Futures” for the “Speculative Anthropologies” series of Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology website.

November 2018
“Summoning AI in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” for “Ethnographies of the Extreme.” The 117th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Jose, California.

May 2018
Joined METI International Advisory Council.

Co-organized Making Contact workshop with Claire Webb for the Breakthrough Listen team at the University of California, Berkeley SETI Research Center.

SETI Primer, an Interdisciplinary Introduction to SETI History, Media, and Scholarship.

49th annual meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society. Victoria, British Columbia.

Can Artificial Intelligence help find alien intelligence?” published in The Conversation and Scientific American.

Version 1.0 of “Social Science in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence” syllabus available for download here.

April 2018
Gizmodo interview about AI, deep learning, and galaxy simulations.

Conversation in Diaphanes magazine about xenolinguistics with José Antonio Millán, Rosalba Bonaccorsi (SETI Institute), Sheri Wells-Jensen (Bowling Green State University), and Doug Vakoch (METI International).

“Space Exploration and Planetary Perspectives” published in “Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition,” edited by Emily A Schultz, Robert H Lavenda, and Roberta Robin Dods, from Oxford University Press Canada.

Visions of Human Futures in Space and SETI” with Jason Wright published in the International Journal of Astrobiology. (previously published online August 2017). Also available on the arXiv and on SocArXiv.

Breakthrough Discuss conference “Alien Life – Diversity in the Universe” at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

March 2018
Conceptualizing Difference in SETI” for “Decoding Alien Intelligence” workshop.  SETI Institute, Mountain View, California.

December 2017
Speculative Ethnography and First Contact with Possible Futures” for “‘Realists’ of a Larger Reality: Anthropological Intersections with Science Fiction.” The 116th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C. (in absentia)

November 2017
WIRED magazine interview about Silicon Valley investment in SETI.

September 2017
“Habitable Wor(l)ds” Blumberg Summit. The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

August 2017
Interstellar Anthropology and Cultural Infrastructures for a Spacefaring Species.” Invited talk for Starship Congress 2017, Monterey, California.

December 2015
Began writing the column “Wanderers,” about the anthropology of space for SAPIENS, a publication of The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. New York City, New York; Denver, Colorado.

November 2015
Co-organized the panel “Making Outer Space Intimate: Familiar Scales and Strange Sites” with Kira Turner (discussant Lisa R. Messeri). Presented my paper “Unfolding the Space Between Stars: Anthropology of the Interstellar” at the 114th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association; Denver, Colorado. 21 November.

April 2015
Launched “Space+Anthropology” at medium.com/space-anthropology