About

Lisa Messeri, Ph.D., is an anthropologist of science and technology and an associate professor of sociocultural anthropology at Yale University. She is also affiliated with the Program in the History of Science and Medicine. Her anthropological research focuses on how science and technology indelibly shape our conceptualization and interaction with the world around us. She emphasizes that assessing the impact of science and technology is not only a technical project but also one that requires social scientific insight. Her work explores the norms, aspirations, and consequences of work done by expert communities as they forge new fields of knowledge and invention. Messeri's first book, 'Placing Outer Space,' considers how the concept of a 'planet' is not only cosmic but also humanistic. Her recent book, 'In the Land of the Unreal,' seeks to understand how the recent resurgence of virtual reality hinges on a belief that the technology could repair rifts in reality. Her research has been featured in prominent media outlets such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Wired, The Atlantic, Slate, CNN, and PBS. She has spoken at academic institutions, film festivals, and museums both domestically and internationally. Messeri earned her Ph.D. from MIT in the program of History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society, and she also holds an S.B. from MIT in aerospace engineering. She maintains an active presence on social media, primarily posting under the handle @lmesseri on Bluesky and formerly on Twitter.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Operating system
• Aesthetics
• Cognitive science
• Cognitive psychology
• Data science
• History
• Visual arts
• Philosophy
• Anthropology
• Epistemology
• Art

Selected publications

• AI Surrogates and illusions of generalizability in cognitive science

  Trends in Cognitive Sciences · 2025-10-22 · 4 citations

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• Spaced Out

  2025-06-04 · 1 citations

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  Abstract Outer space studies are more than a valuable new topical space for anthropologists; they call attention to the social scientific roots of inner/outer spatial assumptions. When anthropologists include outer spaces within anthropological space, they surface hidden binaries that shape anthropological conceptualizations of “space” as a general category. Until recently, social scientists at large have accepted the idea that outer spaces are extra, in the sense of supplementary or excessive, to everyday life on earthly ground. As a result, outer spatial materialities, immaterialities, worldlinesses, epistemological statuses, or ontological dimensions can be treated as extraneous to anthropology’s central concerns or processes. This chapter counters that argument by surveying anthropological projects in outer spaces that surface and challenge three binary/boundary schemas: material/immaterial, terrestrial/extraterrestrial, and epistemology/ontology. This work is relevant for all scholars calling hegemonic spatial binaries into question during the project design, fieldwork, and analysis phases of their work.

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• Science communication with generative AI

  Nature Human Behaviour · 2024 · 49 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science
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• INDEX

  2024-02-22

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• PART I. FANTASY OF PLACE

  2024-02-22

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• ¡Alerta! Engineering on shaky ground By ElizabethReddy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023. 215 pp.

  American Ethnologist · 2024-03-04

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• INTRODUCTION: FANTASY AND TECHNOLOGY

  2024-02-22

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• The limitations of machine learning models for predicting scientific replicability

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2023-08-07 · 9 citations

  letterOpen access

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans the biological, physical, and social sciences.

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• Teaching with ChatGPT: Critiquing Generative Artificial Intelligence from the Classroom

  Anthropology Now · 2023-01-02 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. Over the past few years, these technologies each had moments of promise. Facebook rebranded to Meta to hype up “the metaverse”—an immersive virtual world—as the successor to the internet. One of the presumed technologies enabling the metaverse was the blockchain, whose best-known application is cryptocurrency. NFTs experienced a bubble of interest and also served to inflate crypto, because NFTs are blockchain technologies. Significantly, because these three technologies are interlocking, as one faltered (for example, the crypto exchange FTX’s bankruptcy), they all faltered. It was amidst this floundering that generative AI began making a splash.2. Lisa Messeri, In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, Still forthcoming).3. James Vincent, “Watch Jordan Peele Use AI to Make Barack Obama Deliver a PSA about Fake News,” The Verge, April 17, 2018. https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/4/17/17247334/ai-fake-news-video-barack-obama-jordan-peele-buzzfeed4. https://chat.openai.com/ accessed August 3, 2023.5. Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora, Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019).6. Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell, “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?,” in Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, FAccT ‘21 (New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2021), 610–623. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.34459227. Dan McQuillan, “ChatGPT: The World’s Largest Bullshit Machine,” Transforming Society, February 10, 2023. https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2023/02/10/chatgpt-the-worlds-largest-bullshit-machine/8. Ian Bogost, “The First Year of AI College Ends in Ruin,” The Atlantic, May 16, 2023. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/chatbot-cheating-college-campuses/674073/; Christopher DeLuca, Don A. Klinger, and Louis Volante, “ChatGPT and Cheating: 5 Ways to Change How Students Are Graded,” The Conversation, February 27, 2023, http://theconversation.com/chatgpt-and-cheating-5-ways-to-change-how-students-are-graded-200248; Owen Kichizo Terry, “I’m a Student. You Have No Idea How Much We’re Using ChatGPT,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 12, 2023. https://www.chronicle.com/article/im-a-student-you-have-no-idea-how-much-were-using-chatgpt; Suzy Weiss, “Dishonor Code: What Happens When Cheating Becomes the Norm?,” The Free Press, February 28, 2023. https://www.thefp.com/p/dishonor-code-what-happens-when-cheating9. Leo Marx, “‘Technology’: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept,” Social Research 64, no. 3 (1997): 965–988.Additional informationNotes on contributorsLisa MesseriLisa Messeri is an assistant professor of anthropology at Yale University. She researches the practices and imaginaries of contemporary scientists and innovators, interested in how their work impacts how we understand what it means to be human and what it means to be in the world. Her first book, Placing Outer Space, explores how planetary scientists and exoplanetary astronomers transform planets from scientific objects into places and worlds. Her forthcoming book, In the Land of the Unreal, weaves together the fantasies and technologies that enliven the virtual reality community in Los Angeles.

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• Faire entrer des mondes en résonance

  Techniques & culture · 2021-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Les planétologues ont la capacité de produire des savoirs sur des objets situés très loin de leur expérience du temps et de l’espace. Ceux-ci parviennent parfois, dans un contexte expérimental donné, à surmonter cette incommensurabilité en attribuant à la Terre le statut de planète analogue, substituable à d’autres mondes. Faire l’expérience de la Terre revient ainsi à faire l’expérience d’une autre planète. Quand certains scientifiques finissent par percevoir la Terre comme étrangère, ils ressentent une forme d’enthousiasme que nous désignons ici sous le terme de « résonance ». Il est rare de faire l’expérience totale de la résonance, mais les scientifiques ne ménagent pas leurs efforts pour s’y préparer afin de ne pas la manquer dans les brefs moments où elle se présente. Si la résonance permet aux scientifiques de faire l’expérience du lointain, le terme désigne aussi les moments où l’anthropologue entre en harmonie avec un objet qui lui semblait auparavant étranger. Ainsi, la résonance est un phénomène cognitif et émotionnel qui abolit la distance et transforme le semblable en même.

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Frequent coauthors

• Michael P. Oman‐Reagan

  2 shared

• R. A. Beyer

  Ames Research Center

  1 shared

• Edward Scharff

  Stanford University

  1 shared

• Jevin D. West

  1 shared

• Scott T. Acton

  University of Virginia

  1 shared

• Mohamad Alipour

  Tongji University

  1 shared

• Aylin Caliskan

  1 shared

• Matthew Richards

  The Royal Melbourne Hospital

  1 shared