Ellan Spero is a historian, educator and instructor at MIT in the Technology and Policy Program and Department of Materials Science and Engineering. She is an academic entrepreneur, serving as co-founder and professor of the practice at Station1, a nonprofit higher education institution focused on a new inclusive and cross-disciplinary model of socially-directed science and technology education, research, and innovation. Dr. Spero’s research focuses on the ways that people envision human progress through the systems, institutions, objectives, and narratives that they create. As a historian working at the intersection of technology, business, and higher education, Dr. Spero’s research explores narratives of progress, systems of production, academic-industrial ecosystems, and interactions between humans and material infrastructures. 

Dr. Spero serves on the Board of Directors of the Lawrence History Center, The Watch Library Foundation, and Station1. She serves as the chair of the Prometheans (history of engineering) within the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), co-chair of the engineering studies working group in the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), and on the Trescott Prize Committee for the Business History Conferenc (BHC).  Dr. Spero participates in international research communities across disciplines in the history of science and technology, economic and business history, and specialty conferences on World’s Expos, academic-entrepreneurship, the Anthropocene, and maintenance and innovation. Selected fellowships include Linda Hall Library, the Chemical Heritage Foundation (Science History Institute), and Hagley Museum and Library.

Spero has held visiting appointments at the Ca’ Foscari University (Venice, Italy), University of Padova (Italy), École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland), and the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD, Singapore). Dr. Spero holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in History, Anthropology, Science, Technology and Society. Spero also has a B.S. and M.S. from Cornell University in Fiber Science and Apparel Design, and a M.A from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in Museum Studies and Textile Conservation.