Advancing Human Understanding
Ken Urban on teaching playwriting at MIT
Graduate student spotlight: Mariano Salcedo
World-class
research
Without human understanding, there is no understanding. We are home to scholars and artists doing transformative work in fields vital to addressing the world’s most important challenges. Our faculty develop the values, vision, and ethical compass of tomorrow’s leaders.
Our faculty are among the world’s leading experts in their fields. Here you’ll find a selection of recent publications from SHASS scholars.
A Renaissance woman for the modern age
In “Hagiography in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron,” lecturer Leanna Bridge Rezvani paints a fascinating portrait of an iconoclastic writer, advocate, scholar, and reformer. “As a woman in 16th-century France, Marguerite was remarkable for what she was able to accomplish in various contexts,” Rezvani says.
Seeds of something different
Program in Science, Technology, and Society professor Kate Brown’s new book, “Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City,” examines the hidden history of urban farming, its extensive use, and the politics of growing food. “In a little space, you can grow a lot of produce,” Brown says. “You can have another job and still grow food.”
MIT graduates share how their SHASS education prepared them to take on the world’s greatest challenges.
Ankita Reddy ’19
Anthropology (Course 21A)
Biology (Course 7)
“My classes, discussions, and connections fostered through SHASS taught me the value of deep listening, priming me to ask difficult questions about technological solutions (and to have the courage to do so).”
Meicen Sun PhD ’22
Political Science
“SHASS provided the crucial resources and flexibility needed to investigate how we can approach the social sciences from the perspective of information science.”
Music & Theater Arts gives students the opportunity to explore these disciplines as artistic practices and as cultural, intellectual, and personal avenues of inquiry and discovery.
Music on the brain
Graduate student Claire Southard ’25 explores new frontiers in music technology.
Students learn theater design through the power of play
MIT Theater faculty invite students to draw upon their personal experiences to create evocative set, sound, and lighting designs.
Broadening student minds
If you want to make the world a better place, you need to understand how it works. SHASS plays an essential role at MIT, ensuring our students have a deep understanding of the human implications of the world’s biggest challenges.
Latest news from SHASS
Our work has broad impact at MIT and across the globe. Read the latest about new ideas coming out of SHASS.
MIT affiliates elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2026
The prestigious honor society honors four MIT faculty and 13 additional MIT alumni among more than 250 new members.
T.L. Taylor named 2026-27 CASBS Fellow
MIT professor will use the fellowship in behavioral sciences to advance a book on theme parks as immersive systems, extending her research from digital worlds to physical ones.
Why bother with plausible deniability?
Philosopher Sam Berstler explains why we have social norms that let people engage in open deception.
In the media
The town that reveals all of Trump’s bad economic ideas
Every automation wave in history created more jobs than it destroyed. Will AI be different?
How Target became one of America’s most iconic brands
Hot Topic: Kate Brown and Tiny Gardens Everywhere
SHASS videos
Learning about global music traditions and cultures
