Department of History

Kristen Haring studies science and technology in relationship to community and culture. MIT Press published her first book in 2006. Ham Radio's Technical Culture traces the social, civic, and career implications that two-way radio communication had for hobbyists in the mid-twentieth-century United States. The book further offers evidence of how norms about technology influenced consumption, regulation, and implementation. Kristen is currently working on a book manuscript about the cultural history of code and, for a future book project, is researching the design and social conventions developed to facilitate telephone conversation.

Her research has been supported by: a residency as an Art, Science, and Business fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart; a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; a postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin; a Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities; and fellowships from the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and from the Smithsonian Institution, held consecutively at the National Museum of American History.

Kristen has received three teaching awards and the IEEE Life Members' Prize in Electrical History 2004 from the Society for the History of Technology for the best article on the history of electrotechnology published during the preceding year.

She has served on the board of directors of the Keith Haring Foundation since its creation by her brother in 1989.

• PhD, History of Science, Harvard University
• MS, Mathematics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• BA, Mathematics, magna cum laude & Phi Beta Kappa, University of Pennsylvania

Books

• Ham Radio's Technical Culture, Inside Technology series (Cambridge: MIT Press; cloth 2006, paper 2008)

Articles

• "The 'Freer Men' of Ham Radio: How a Technical Hobby Provided Social and Spatial Distance," Technology and Culture 44 (2003): 734-761. Recognized by the Society for the History of Technology with its IEEE Life Members' Prize in Electrical History 2004 for the best article on the history of electrotechnology published during the preceding year.
• "Amateur Radio," in the Encyclopedia of Recreation and Leisure in America, ed. Gary S. Cross, American Civilization series (New York: Scribner's, 2004).
• "Morse Code Knitting," in Transmission Art Archive, ed. Galen Joseph-Hunter and Maria Papadomanolaki (forthcoming 2009).
• "Code," in A Short Dictionary of Unwieldy Words, ed. Florian Hoellerer and Jean-Baptiste Joly (Stuttgart: Merz & Solitude, forthcoming 2010).

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