About
Trained as a philosopher and anthropologist of science, I study a wide range of topics including creativity, innovation, leadership, scientific practice, artificial intelligence, animal behavior, cognition, subjectivity, the body and the self. The common thread weaving through these themes is the anthropology of the modern and the investigation of how science and technology are woven into, and constantly redefine, both our social fabric and what makes us human. Reconciling philosophy and fieldwork, I have explored the question of the human subject by studying an expert inventor working for France’s largest petroleum company, the world famous scientist, Stephen Hawking, and presently, people who have diabetes as they manage their disease via sophisticated machines and therapeutic animals. Based on this empirical work, I have developed the concept of the distributed-centered subject, a reconceptualization of the human whose competencies are distributed in and constituted by others, whether humans, machines or animals.
Awards
- Fellow, Berggruen Institute, 2018-2019
- Fellow, Centre for Advanced Study, the Norwegian Academy of Science & Letters, 2019-2020
- Fellow, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftgeschichte, 1998-1999
- Fellow, Maison Française, Oxford University, 1997
- Fellow, Cambridge University, 1996
Relevant Publications
- Mialet, H. (2012). Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the anthropology of the knowing subject. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Mialet, H. (2008). L’Entreprise Créatrice: le rôle des récits, des objets et de l’acteur dans l’invention. Paris: Hermès-Lavoisier
- Mialet, H. (2019). Becoming the Other: the body in Translation, in D. Gruber and L. Walsh (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language & Science. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 375-384