History

Deborah Blum and her new book, “The Poison Squad”

Getting serious about food safety

Deborah Blum’s new book explores the unlikely origins of food and drink regulation in the U.S.

October 3, 2018

Sheila Widnall, MIT Institute Professor and former secretary of the U.S. Air Force

3Q: Sheila Widnall on sexual harassment in STEM

National Academies report cites need for strong leadership and cultural change; will be focus of upcoming MIT panel discussion.

September 17, 2018

This wearable water quality test kit (early prototype pictured at left) provides a simple, accessible way to test the presence of E. coli in drinking water. A J-WAFS Solutions grant will enable an MIT research team to develop a regionally-appropriate commercialization strategy to ensure that these test kits can be accessible to rural and urban communities in Nepal as well as the other areas in Sou...

J-WAFS awards grants for commercialization of food and water technologies

Solutions grants will aid commercialization of novel MIT technologies to test water safety and improve agricultural productivity.

September 11, 2018

“The classroom is where I practice and cultivate a kind of utopia with my students, in the best possible sense,” says Associate Professor Ana Miljacki.

Ana Miljacki: Scholar of designers and dreamers

Historian, curator, and designer studies architects and their quest to make a better world.

September 5, 2018

Left to right: Paloma Gonzalez, Associate Professor Takehiko Nagakura, Chang Liu, and Wenzhe Peng pose with a panoramic view of Machu Picchu in Peru. They are part of an MIT team that has worked to digitally document the site.

MIT team digitizes historic sanctuary of Machu Picchu

What if we could immerse ourselves in this UNESCO World Heritage Site through virtual reality or use augmented reality to interact with its 3-D site map?

August 28, 2018

Catherine Clark and the cover of "Paris and the Cliché of History"

What Paris shows us about the history of photography

MIT professor’s book develops a new narrative about photography and the ways we use it, from the place where it all began.

August 16, 2018

"Rising inequality is highly correlated to unequal access to education," Piketty said in an address at MIT. "In the United States, 95 percent of those with parents at the highest income levels attend college, while only about 20 percent of the poorest do, research shows."

At MIT, Thomas Piketty calls for policies and collaborations to reduce income inequality

French economist was a keynote speaker at the 2018 World Economic History Congress.

August 9, 2018

Joan Ilacqua (left), co-chair of the board of directors for The History Project, leads a group of MIT students through the LGBTQ history of Boston.

PKG Summer Series: Documenting, preserving, and sharing Boston’s LGBTQ history

Through the PKG Summer Series, students follow the trail of the first-ever Boston Pride parade and view archives of early LGBTQ activism in Boston.

August 3, 2018

Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga and his book, "The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production" (MIT Press)

How Africans developed scientific knowledge of the deadly tsetse fly

New book by MIT Associate Professor Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga explores science in action in Africa.

August 2, 2018

MIT historian Anne McCants, vice president of the International Economic History Association (IEHA), says that research presented at the 2018 World Economic History Congress speaks "directly to the questions the whole world is asking at this moment."

Q&A: Anne McCants on "Waves of Globalization," the 2018 World Economic History Congress at MIT

Congress of leading thinkers in economic, business, and social history convenes in the US for first time in 50 years.

July 30, 2018

Barry Posen, a Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the MIT Security Studies Program at the Center for International Studies, provided a foreign policy briefing on US grand strategy to consuls generals and journalists in April, 2018. He is the author of "The Case for Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy."

3Q: Barry Posen on the NATO Summit and state of the alliance

National security expert discusses US defense spending and considers whether the NATO alliance should remain a US priority.

July 20, 2018

Nancy Hopkins (center) stands with Salvador Luria (left) and David Baltimore at the MIT Cancer Center in the 1980s.

Institute Archives spotlights pioneering women at MIT

Initiative is building collections highlighting the contributions of female faculty.

July 6, 2018

“Innovation is born of openness to futures that are not easily imaginable," says Caley Horan, assistant professor of history. "History reminds us that many ideas, institutions, and organizational structures that now seem natural and inevitable did not always exist. In doing so, it throws open the door to boundless possibility.”

3 Questions: Historian Caley Horan on the rise of private insurance in the U.S.

Assistant professor explores how risk sharing and mutual aid shifted to individual forms of protection.

July 3, 2018

“People usually think MIT is exclusively focused on STEM research," says PhD student Elena Sobrino. "I saw this program, HASTS, as a way to be in conversation with physical or biological scientists, as a social scientist myself.”

Discovering hidden stories in the Flint water crisis

Graduate student Elena Sobrino looks beyond the headlines to study interactions between the city’s people and institutions.

June 24, 2018

“One of things historians do," says MIT Associate Professor Tanalís Padilla (top right), "is analyze how systems of power are constructed — state power, corporate power, racist power — and what role different institutions play in that.” Clockwise from upper left: Craig Steven Wilder, Padilla, Malick Ghachem, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu.

The task of history

At community dialogue, MIT historians discuss the power of historical knowledge to make a better world.

May 22, 2018

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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