Anthony Ryan Hatch

When Professor Anthony Hatch joined Wesleyan in 2015, one facet of the University struck him deeply: a campus-wide devotion to interdisciplinarity as a pillar of the academic experience. That same spirit informs Black Box Labs, a research and training laboratory Hatch established in 2020 as founding director, in which students and faculty collaborate on qualitative research that spans science, technology, and medicine. Alongside Professor Hatch and co-director Professor Mitali Thakor, undergraduate research associates investigate issues and unearth practices that perpetuate intersectional social inequalities. No topic is beyond their exposing insight: mass-scale bio-modification, the convergence of food and pharmaceutical interests, the tensions between digital privacy and child protection, and the racial health injustices of COVID-19. By creating interdisciplinary research projects that probe into issues of power and inequality, they expose social and cultural practices that reinforce unequal patterns of penalty and privilege across society, historically and today.

Professor Hatch’s accomplishments while at Wesleyan—among them, he recently co-authored a National Academies of Sciences committee report aimed at mitigating inequities around innovations in health and medicine—have put him in a transformative position. “Here,” Hatch says, “I have room to push the envelope and bring others along with me.”