Edward Jones-Imhotep

Edward Jones-Imhotep is the Director of the Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology at the University of Toronto, where he also serves as an associate professor. He received his PhD from Harvard University in history of science and technology. As an award-winning historian of science and technology, his research focuses on the intersections of science, technology and modern culture, specifically what technological failures reveal about the historical place of machines and machine behaviours in modern societies.  

Jones-Imhotep’s first book, The Unreliable Nation: Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in the Cold War, won the 2018 Sidney Edelstein Prize in the best scholarly work in the history of technology. In 2021, he launched the Black Androids project. Working with a group of advanced undergraduate students, the project explores the black technological experience in 19th and early 20th century America through a history of the “black androids” — automata in the form of black humans.. In 2022, Jones-Imhotep received the Black Research Network’s IGNITE grant for his new research, Black Steam, Blacktop and Black Light.