Publications

Selected Publications

See CV for complete list of publications

Books

2024. In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual Reality, Los Angeles, and Fantasies of Technology Otherwise. Duke University Press.

2016. Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds. Duke University Press.


Select Articles, Essays, and Book Chapters

2024. Messeri, L. and M.J. Crockett. "Artificial Intelligence and Illusions of Understanding in Scientific Research." Nature 627: 49-58. Open PDF

2022. “Ethnography of/and Virtual Reality.” In Costa, E., P. Lange, N. Haynes, & J. Sinanan (ed) The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology.

2021. “Realities of Illusion: Illusion as a Way of Knowing from Torres Strait to Virtual Reality.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 27(2): 340-359.

2021. “Attending to the Otherwise: Reading Illusions through Virtual Reality.” In Fried, S. & R.  Rosenberger (ed) Postphenomenology and Imaging: How to Read Technology.

2019. “Imagining Feminist Futures on the Small Screen: Inclusion and Care in VR Fictions.” NatureCulture 5. With M. Brandt.

2019. "The Moon's Earth." New Geographies 11: Extraterrestrial​.

2018. “Greetings from Silicon Beach,Anthropology News.

2017. "Gestures of Cosmic Relation and the Search for Another Earth." Environmental Humanities.

2017. "Resonant Worlds: Cultivating Proximal Encounters in Planetary Science." American Ethnologist​.

2017. "Extra-terra Incognita: Martian Maps in the Digital Age." Social Studies of Science.

2015. "Beyond the Anthropocene: Un-Earthing an Epoch." Environment and Society: Advances in Research 6(1). With V. Olson.

2015.  "The Greatest Missions Never Flown:  Anticipatory Discourse and the Projectory in Technological Communities."  Technology and Culture 56 (1).  With J. Vertesi.

2014. "Earth as Analog: The Interdisciplinary Debate and Astronaut Training that took Earth to the Moon." Astropolitics 12(2-3).

2010.  "The Problem With Pluto:  Conflicting Cosmologies and the Classification of Planets."  Social Studies of Science 40(2). 


Public Scholarship

2021. “The Man, The Myth, The Metaverse.” Wired.

2017. "We need to stop talking about outer space as a 'frontier.'" Slate.

2016. "What's So Special about Another Earth." The New York Times.

2015. "Martian Science vs. 'The Martian.'" Motherboard.

2014. "McConaugheys in Space." Motherboard.