Marie-Pier Boucher is 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 UofT, 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.
Master of Information
Master of Museum Studies
PhD in Information
Marie’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.
Media Studies; Science and Technology Studies; Global Health, Ecology and Biotechnology; Outer Space; Art, Architecture, and Urban Studies; Research-creation
Books
Being Material, Ed. Marie-Pier Boucher, Stefan Helmreich, Leila W Kinney, Skylar Tibbits, and Evan Ziporyn, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019
Heteropolis, Ed. Marie-Pier Boucher, Jean-Maxime Dufresne, Gema Melgar, and Jean-François Prost, Montreal: Independent publication, 2013
Adaptive Actions (Madrid), Ed. Marie-Pier Boucher, Gema Melgar, Frank Nobert, and Jean-François Prost, Montreal: Independent publication, 2011
Selected Articles
Boucher, Marie-Pier, “Penser avec Isabelle Stengers,” Epistémocritique, Vol. 19 (forthcoming, Fall 2020)
Boucher, Marie-Pier, “Architectures of Aliveness: Building Beyond Gravity,” The Routledge Companion to Biotechnology in Art and Architecture, Ed. Charissa Terranova et Meredith Tromble, London: Routledge, 2016, p. 136-155.
Keynotes
“Useful Mismeasures,” Useful Fictions, École Polytechnique, Paris, September 12, 2019
“Perdre pied, faire espace,” 3rd Graduate Student Symposium, MÉDIIAS (Mouvement des Étudiant-e-s de l’Interactivité, de l’Image Animée et du Son), Université de Montréal, Canada, May 16 2015
Collective Exhibitions
“Fossilation,” Festival Hors Pistes, Matières de l’image, Centre Pompidou, Paris, January-February 2021
“Heteropolis,” TWS (Tokyo Wonder Site), Japan, 2015
“Adaptive Actions Camp,” Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Montreal, 2010
“Adaptive Actions Camp,” Biennale Madrid Abierto, Spain, 2010
INF2235– Outer Space and the City
at ICCIT:
CCT385 – Conceptualizing Media Environments
CCT472 – Media Archaeology
CCT495 – Alien Media: Technological Trips in Space
CCT 495 – Media, Health & Extreme Environments
CCT205 – Critical Approaches to Cultural Transformation
