2025-2026 College Fellows

History of Science

I study the political and cultural history of expertise in the twentieth-century United States. My first book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America (Harvard University Press, 2025), examined the role of self-styled management and success experts in promoting the "entrepreneurial" mindset as a solution — ultimately chimerical — to problems of economic precarity and competitiveness. My new book project, tentatively titled From the Jaws of Victory: The End of World War II, the Start of the Cold War, and the Last Days of American Antifascism, explores the spread and retreat of the idea that the struggle against fascism remained incomplete after World War II within the United States itself. I am also the senior editor of The Drift and write widely on American politics, culture, and economics. 

Sociology

Hi, I'm Loren! I use quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the social and structural determinants of child and family well-being. My work has been published in outlets like Social Science & Medicine, Sociological Forum, and Children & Youth Services Review and has received awards and funding from the American Sociological Association, Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, and Society for the Study of Social Problems. I have also engaged with public audiences through the Scholars Strategy Network, NPR, and more, and I am committed to advancing equity in higher education with QuestBridge, a scholarship organization for low-income students. I received my PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 2025. For more information: www.iamlorenbeard.com.

Religion

I am a scholar of modern Jewish philosophy and literature interested in how modern thinkers use Jewish sources to address broader questions of representation, power, and ethics. My current book project traces how post-enlightenment German Jewish thinkers reinterpret the biblical prohibition of idolatry to develop social critiques and aesthetic theories. I received my PhD in German studies from Yale University. At Harvard, I teach modern Jewish philosophy and political thought, secularization, and media theory.

South Asian Studies

I am a scholar of early modern religious and intellectual history of South Asia, seeking to bring attention to some untold stories of religious rivalry, efforts in conflict resolution, and language politics, especially when they hide in unlikely places, such as language textbooks. I focus on two such works of Bengali authors that paint a rich picture of intellectual and social and religious life on the eve of colonialism. My current research examines the influences of transformative religious frameworks from the thirteenth century onwards on language analysis and pedagogy of Sanskrit in Mughal India.

Comparative Literature

My research examines (self-)translation, transwriting, and transmediation as reparative tools for advancing social justice. I ask: How do Sinophone and Hispanophone self-translators democratize language and culture by re-mediating their own narratives? How do weird, queer, and subversive linguistic interpolations diversify the global literary landscape from the periphery?

Social Studies

I work at the intersection of the sociologies of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, statecraft, and law, with substantive interests in migration, postcoloniality, epistemology, and health. The dissertation and book project, The Rainbow Nation and the Gays it Excludes: South Africa’s Management of Sexuality and Migration (1913-2020), analyzes South Africa’s policies related to sexual minority refugees. I also study the sociological construction of knowledge about sexual violence, campus sexual assault, and Germany’s genocides in Namibia (1904-1909) and Europe (1933-1945).

Sociology

I am a sociologist and ethnographer who studies institutional distrust, social movements, culture, and conspiracy theories. My current research focuses on the role of institutional distrust in recruitment to, and sustained participation in, fringe movements and online communities that espouse radical beliefs, such as conspiracy theories. I received my PhD in sociology from Brandeis University in 2024, and my work has been published in The Sociological Quarterly, Global Public Health, and through the Center for Artistic Activism. At Harvard, I teach classes on conspiracy culture, digital ethnography, and propaganda and persuasion. 

Psychology

I am a cognitive neuroscientist interested in how the brain formats information to produce complex behavior: how do we go from neurons that can only fire (or not) to our rich internal and external lives? Using fMRI and computational modeling, I seek to understand how representations of our environment change based on things like task goals or difficulty, and how these representations differ between brain regions. As a College Fellow, I teach courses on statistical thinking, how artificial intelligence differs from human intelligence, and cognitive control.

Religion

I am a proud daughter of Samoa and Aotearoa New Zealand with heritage from Lalomanu, Amaile, Samusu and Poutasi, and Ireland / Switzerland. Being a māmā and wife also impact my research area of indigenous Pacific Christianity and mental wellbeing for our communities. I received my PhD in Theology from Waipapa Taumata Rau – The University of Auckland which examined how diasporic indigenous Pacific women imaged or perceived God and how this impacted their mental wellbeing. My current research aims to reflect on what an indigenous Pacific and Catholic theology of mental wellbeing might look like given the negative legacy of colonialism and the incorporation of pre-European contact spiritualities into the everyday lives of families.

Psychology

I study emotional and social development in childhood, with a focus on how differences in physiological regulation and social cognition contribute to the emergence of behavior problems. My work examines the early risk factors for callous-unemotional traits and externalizing behaviors, integrating physiological, behavioral, and cognitive measures to understand the mechanisms that underlie adaptive and maladaptive development. I have developed innovative tasks to assess children’s affiliative preferences and social information processing, which inform both theory and the design of targeted interventions. Ultimately, my goal is to bridge developmental science with practical strategies that support at-risk children in clinical, educational, and community contexts.

Psychology

My research focuses on finding learning strategies to improve visual long-term memory. I'm currently working with Dr. Dan Schacter to see whether drawing and tracing can be used as encoding strategies to improve memory of faces. Aside from research, I teach classes on learning strategies, amnesia, and writing in psychology.

Government

I study international relations, conflict and security, great power politics, and quantitative political methodology. My projects explore the relationship between illegal militant organizations and legal activist organizations within dissident movements, investigating how activist actions influence support for militancy, and how militant propaganda can radicalize activists. Another set of my projects analyzes how international actors, institutions, and great power competition can influence the likelihood and microdynamics of civil war. I use experimental, quasi-experimental, and observational designs, as well as text-as-data methods in my projects. I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis.

Psychology

My overarching research focuses on psychological processes in response to social justice issues. I'm currently working with Dr. Mina Cikara to investigate collective emotion regulation processes in the context of racial and gender injustices. At Harvard, I teach classes on political psychology, personal and societal well-being, and the psychology of defensiveness. 

Sociology

My work focuses on poverty, inequality, and organizations. I am currently working on adapting my dissertation into a book manuscript, which will examine the ideological—and, by extension, practical—influences that frontline nonprofit organizations exert on the everyday management of American homelessness. The project draws on interviews with nonprofit leaders from dozens of cities and on an original corpus of nonprofit documents. I received my PhD in Sociology from Harvard.

Psychology

My research explores intergroup bias – what it predicts, how it varies across people and places, and the contributing role of multiple, distinct cognitive processes. I approach these questions at varying levels of analysis: at the individual level, I rely on mathematical models to formalize the cognitive processes underlying implicit social cognition; at the regional level, I examine correlates of region-level bias and explore how cultural norms relate to ideologies, values, traits, cognitions, and attitudes.