Interdisciplinary Anthropologist
Disposable camera photograph of two radio telescopes rising above a flat field at the Green Bank Observatory, West Virginia, under a heavy overcast sky. Bright mown grass in the foreground gives way to tall wild grass, with a treeline behind the telescopes. The larger dish faces upward, pale against grey.
2023.06

Joined 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.

2021.05

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.

2020.12

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

2020.11

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

2020.07

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

2020.02

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

2020.01

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

2019.11

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).

View from high on the structure of the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, looking along a steel walkway with safety railings. The white lattice of the dish frame fills the upper frame. In the distance, a second smaller dish stands above a dense forest canopy under flat, diffuse light.
2019.10

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.

2019.07

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.

2019.06

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.

2019.02

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

2018.12

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

2018.11

“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.

2018.05

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.

2018.04

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.

2018.03

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

2017.12

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)

2017.11

WIRED magazine interview about Silicon Valley investment in SETI.

2017.09

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

2017.08

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

2015.12

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.

2015.11

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.

2015.04

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

Photograph taken at roughly a 45-degree angle from the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, looking down and out across the observatory grounds. Two circular mounds of grass, each topped with a small white laser alignment post, sit symmetrically in a trimmed field divided by a gravel path. Scattered conifers and scrubland stretch back toward forested hills.