Project Manager (UCSB) 2019-2020

Rebecca Baker is an English PhD student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, pursuing her doctoral degree with dual emphases in Cognitive Science and Information, Technology, and Society. She is broadly interested in cultural constructions of scientific discourses–including science fiction–with a focus on space travel/colonization, speculative worldbuilding, and the alien. Her work is situated at the intersections of Science and Technology Studies, Cognitive Studies, the Digital Humanities, and Ecocriticism, with an emphasis on decolonial politics, marginal voices, and the biological/technological turn in our cultural understanding of the human.

Rebecca’s work is currently centered on popular and science fictional representations of Mars and Martian colonization, spanning from early 20th century speculative science fiction to futurologist projections into and beyond the current era.