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Education:

Ph.D. Candidate, Vanier Scholar; ������Ƶ University

M.A. Anthropology; Hunter College, CUNY

B.A. Anthropology, Religion, Thomas Hunter Honors Program; Hunter College, CUNY

Contact:

Email: omanreagan@mun.ca

Research Interests:

My main research interests include: exploration beyond our solar system; science; interstellar space; SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence); imagination, futures, and science fiction; emergent and new religions; and social movements. Geographically my research has been situated in online space, outer space, Indonesia, the United States, and Canada.

Selected Writing:

 

• “Wanderers” column, SAPIENS:

• “Speculative Ethnography and First Contact with Possible Futures.” Paper presented for “‘Realists’ of a Larger Reality: Anthropological intersections with Science Fiction.” 116th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association; Washington, D.C. 2 December. (2017)

• “Conceptualizing Difference in SETI: New Anthropological Insights on Extraterrestrial Intelligence from Theory, Ontology, and Multispecies Ethnography.” (accepted white-paper). SETI Institute. (2017)

• “Visions of Human Futures in Space and SETI.” (with Jason T. Wright). International Journal of Astrobiology, 2017, 1–12. (2017)

• “The Resonance of Earth, Other Worlds, and Exoplanets.” (with Lisa Messeri). Anthrodendum/Savage Minds. February 23. (2017)

• “The Religion of the Educated Classes Revisited: New Religions, the Nonreligious, and Educational Levels.” (with James R. Lewis and Sean E. Currie). Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 55 (1): 91–104. (2016)

• “Unfolding the Space Between Stars: Anthropology of the Interstellar.” Paper presentation for “Making Outer Space Intimate: Familiar Scales and Strange Sites.” 114th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association; Denver, Colorado. 21 November. (2015)

• “The Social Lives of Plants, in Space.” Astrosociological Insights 4 (2): 4–8. (2015)

• “The Dregs of the Library: Trashing the Occupy Wall Street Library.” Discard Studies: Studies of waste, pollution, and externalities, August 31. Republished in Backchannels, Society for Social Studies of Science, September 7. (2015)

• “Occupying Cyberspace: Indonesian Cyberactivism and Occupy Wall Street.” Paper presentation. For "Bridging Digital and Physical Publics: Digital Anthropologists’ Current Engagements with 21st Century Publics.” 112th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association; Chicago, Illinois. 22 November. (2013)

• “Occupying Cyberspace: Indonesian Cyberactivists and Occupy Wall Street.” Critical Quarterly 54 (2): 39–45. (2012)

 

Selected Events:

• “Habitable Wor(l)ds.” Invited participant. Blumberg Summit. Moderator Luis Campos, Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology. John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress. Washington, D.C. (2017)

• “Interstellar Anthropology and Cultural Infrastructures for a Spacefaring Species.” Invited presentation. Starship Congress 2017. Monterey, California. (2017)

• Breakthrough Discuss. Invited participant. Stanford University Department of Physics, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Breakthrough Initiatives. Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. (2017)

• “Making Outer Space Intimate: Familiar Scales and Strange Sites.” Panel organizer, chair. (with Kira Turner). 114th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. (2015)