Medialab Prado

Jimena Canales is an Assistant Professor at the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and currently Director of Undergraduate Studies. She specializes in the history and philosophy of the physical sciences. Areas of interests include epistemology, science and representation, and theories of modernity and postmodernity.

Her current book project, A History of the Tenth of a Second, asks why many scientific disciplines ranging from experimental psychology to physics were defined by studies of short moments of time. It also analyses important modern technologies (such as telegraphy, photography and early cinematography) in relation to this moment.

She has published on the history of architecture, film, relativity theory, and nineteenth and early twentieth-century philosophy. Some recent publications include: Movement before Cinematography: The High-Speed Qualities of Sentiment, Journal of Visual Culture 5, Einstein, Bergson, and the Experiment that Failed: Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nations, Modern Language Notes,  Criminal Skins: Tattoos and Modern Architecture in the work of Adolf Loos, Architectural History: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (with Andrew Herscher) and Photogenic Venus: The 'Cinematographic Turn' in Science and its Alternatives.