Marie-Pier Boucher

Marie-Pier Boucher is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology with a graduate appointment in the Faculty of Information. Prior to joining U of T, she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Art, Science and Technology + Program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT. She holds a PhD in Art, Art History and Visual Studies from Duke University.

Professor Boucher’s research focuses on the design of habitats for sustaining life in extreme environments. She is currently working on a book project which looks at the relationship between health, architectural design, and perceptual activity in a range of extreme environments (physical and symbolic) to examine how the changes in direction and orientation induced by levitation and microgravity can inform the design of Earth-based habitats. She is also working on an umbrella project, Interplanetary Habitation: The Earth, the Moon, Mars and the City, which investigates the socio-technical future of planetary life in relation to growing concerns over health and biotechnology, mobility and artificial intelligence.