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Alen Agaronov is a serious scientist. He works public health, public science, and social studies of science to investigate academics, institutions, and labor. His ethnographic research centers around the theatricality of public science, such as cases where academics "acted" overly-serious, "staged" board meetings, or used surveys as "prop devices." Through his work in performance, video, sculpture, painting and video-stills, he also investigates such things as: bureaucracy in higher education, informality in scientific research, and performativity of science expertise. Alen's ongoing series of lecture-performances, collectively titled critical armchair anthropology, attempt to deconstruct science communication by taking on the form of the peer-reviewed journal article, the science poster, the conference talk, and the Zoom webinar. His current project, i'm the only caucasian here, investigates literal Caucasian identity and its relationship to carpentry, labor, art and whiteness. His forthcoming experiment studies the relationship between space, time and PowerPoint.

Alen is a Doctor of Science candidate in Social & Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and pursuing a secondary field in Critical Media Practice through The Film Study Center at Harvard University. Alen regularly teaches courses in aesthetics, making, higher education, and medical anthropology at Harvard College. He was named a New Civics Fellow by the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Rose Service-Learning Fellow by The Chan School. Prior to Harvard, Alen studied food science and engaged in public science and program evaluation at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College.

https://www.alenagaronov.com/