Encounters with the Established Professionals of 2025 in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
In the hallowed halls of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) has recently welcomed a fresh influx of intellectuals, each bringing their unique expertise to the table.
Rachel Fraser, an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, joins MIT after teaching at the University of Oxford. Her areas of interest span epistemology, language, feminism, aesthetics, and political philosophy. Fraser's main project is a book manuscript on the epistemology of narrative.
Brian Hedden, a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy with a shared appointment in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, is another new addition. Hedden's research focuses on how we ought to form beliefs and make decisions, with a focus on epistemology, decision theory, and ethics, including ethics of AI.
Naoki Egami, a professor in the Department of Political Science, specializes in political methodology and develops statistical methods for questions in political science and the social sciences. As a faculty affiliate of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, Egami's current research programs focus on external validity and generalizability, machine learning and AI for the social sciences, and causal inference with network and spatial data.
Sara Brown, an associate professor in the Music and Theater Arts Section, is known for her interdisciplinary collaborations. Her work encompasses stage designs for theater, opera, and dance, and she has been involved in numerous notable projects, such as 'Carousel' at the Boston Lyric Opera, 'The Other Shore' at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Jacob's Pillow, and 'The Lehman Trilogy' at the Huntington Theatre Company.
Miguel Zenón, an associate professor in the Music and Theater Arts Section, is a Grammy Award winner, Guggenheim Fellow, MacArthur Fellow, Doris Duke Artist, and holder of an honorary doctorate degree in the arts. Zenón's musical career spans over eighteen albums as a band leader and collaborations with various musicians and ensembles. He has given hundreds of lectures and master classes at institutions worldwide. In 2011, Zenón founded Caravana Cultural, a programme that presents jazz concerts free of charge in rural areas of Puerto Rico.
Viola Schmitt, an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, is a linguist with a special interest in semantics, focusing on understanding general constraints on human language meaning.
The search results do not provide information about who was the professor at the Music and Theater Arts Department before Naoki Egami and Miguel Zenón joined in 2025.
Sara Brown's upcoming co-directed work, 'Circlusion,' takes place within a fully immersive inflatable space. Miguel Zenón's future projects are yet to be announced, but his contributions to the world of music and academia are already significant. The addition of these scholars to MIT's faculty promises exciting developments in their respective fields.
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