The MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences has declared modifications in leadership across three of its academic divisions for the 2025-26 academic term.

“We have an outstanding group of leaders joining us,” states Agustín Rayo, the Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. “I am eagerly anticipating collaborating with them and integrating them into the school’s leadership team.”

Sandy Alexandre will assume the role of head of MIT Literature. Alexandre, an associate professor of literature, acted as co-head of the section in 2024-25. Her research encompasses late 19th-century to contemporary Black American literature and culture. Her debut publication, “The Properties of Violence: Claims to Ownership in Representations of Lynching,” utilizes the historical context of American lynching violence as a framework to grasp issues related to displacement, ownership, and the American pastoral ideology in literary terms. Her scholarship insightfully examines how literature imagines ecologies of individuals, locations, and objects as recurring manifestations of racial violence, reverberating throughout the extensive timeline of U.S. history. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature from Dartmouth College and a master’s and PhD in English from the University of Virginia.

Manduhai Buyandelger will take on the role of director of the Program in Women’s and Gender Studies. As a professor of anthropology, Buyandelger’s research aims to devise strategies for achieving more holistic (and less aggressive) living for both humans and non-humans by exploring the politics of multi-species care and exploitation, urban growth, and the interaction of varied material and spiritual realities shaping diverse entities’ experiences. By investigating urban multi-species coexistence in locations such as Mongolia, the United States, Japan, and beyond, her inquiries delve into possibilities for fostering an integrated multi-species existence. She is also initiating an anthro-engineering project with the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) to examine paths to decarbonization in Mongolia by focusing on user-centric design and addressing political and cultural barriers related to clean energy. Additionally, she offers a transdisciplinary course with NSE, 21A.S01 (Anthro-Engineering: Decarbonization at the Million Person Scale), in collaboration with colleagues in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. She has authored two works on religion, gender, and politics in post-socialist Mongolia: “Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Gender, and Memory in Contemporary Mongolia” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and “A Thousand Steps to the Parliament: Constructing Electable Women in Mongolia” (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Her essays have been published in American Ethnologist, Journal of Royal Anthropological Association, Inner Asia, and Annual Review of Anthropology. She earned a BA in literature and linguistics and an MA in philology from the National University of Mongolia, and a PhD in social anthropology from Harvard University.

Eden Medina PhD ’05 will take on the role of head of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society. A professor specializing in science, technology, and society, Medina investigates the connections between science, technology, and political transformations in Latin America. She is the author of “Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile” (MIT Press, 2011), which garnered the 2012 Edelstein Prize for the best book on the history of technology and the 2012 Computer History Museum Prize for the best book on the history of computing. Her co-edited work “Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America” (MIT Press, 2014) was awarded the Amsterdamska Award by the European Society for the Study of Science and Technology (2016). In addition to her writings, Medina co-curated the exhibition “How to Design a Revolution: The Chilean Road to Design,” which debuted in 2023 at the Centro Cultural La Moneda in Santiago, Chile, and is currently exhibited at the Disseny Hub design museum in Barcelona, Spain. She holds a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT and a master’s degree in legal studies from Yale Law School. Before commencing her graduate studies, she worked as an electrical engineer.