Danielle Carr

Assistant Professor


2022 Ph.D., Anthropology, Columbia University
 

Danielle Carr is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Society and Genetics at UCLA. Trained as an anthropologist and historian of neuroscience, her work brings together the critical study of the brain and mind sciences in the twentieth century with the history of politics. At UCLA, she also directs the Material Intelligence as Historical Problem project.

Her work has been funded by organizations including the Livescu Foundation, the NSF, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the Chateaubriand Fellowship, the Society for Psychological Anthropology, the Council for European Studies, and the Mellon Foundation.

Her current book project is political history of neural engineering in the twentieth century, focusing on the development of Deep Brain Stimulation for psychiatric disorders. Both within and outside of the academy, most commentary treats neural engineering, and the “crisis of agency” it allegedly introduces, as something new. Yet technologies to modulate and record brain activity have been both a central concern in the development of liberal ideologies of personhood and freedom over the twentieth century, and a critical feature of the “data economy” or “surveillance capitalism.” The book offers the first monograph-length historical account of neural engineering, documenting the rise, fall, and reappearance of brain implant technology.

Her academic and public writing has appeared in a variety of publications, and can be found here.