Anto Mohsin

About

Anto Mohsin is an assistant professor in residence in the Liberal Arts Program at Northwestern University in Qatar and an affiliated faculty member of the Science in Human Culture Program at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He is an interdisciplinary scholar of infrastructure, energy, and  the environment specializing in Indonesia in the twentieth century with a broader interest in Southeast Asia. At Northwestern Qatar, he teaches undergraduate courses examining science, technology, environment, and disasters in society, as well as on a history of knowledge production of and in Asia.

He has researched and published different science and technology studies (STS) topics. His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in several journals, including Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia; East Asian Science; Technology and Society: An International Journal; and Arcadia, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal for short, engaging environmental histories. He has also published a chapter on community resilience in the wake of a long-running energy-related disaster in the edited volume The Sociotechnical Constitution of Resilience (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and on electric infrastructure development in Indonesia’s borderlands in the anthology Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia (University of Hawaii, 2022).

His first book, Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development, published by the University of Wisconsin Press, comes out in December 2023.

He has received several grants and fellowships, including Northwestern Buffett Faculty fellowship, Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society (IAS-STS) visiting scholarship, TAMUQ Center for Learning’s TEE grant, HBKU Innovation Center Cycle 3 grant, internal NU-Q research grant, QNRF NPRP Cycle 12 grant, Huntington Library summer residential institute in the history of science, technology, and medicine fellowship, and QNRF UREP Cycle 19 grant.

He's currently working on three research projects. The first one is on energized electrical transmission maintenance and maintainers. He’s examining the gender and labor dimensions of this important infrastructural work. The second is on a historical study of the popularization of electricity by examining how the science and practical applications of electricity were communicated by various authors from the early eighteenth until the mid-twentieth centuries. The third is on science journalism in Qatar based on a Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF)-funded research project.

Prior to joining Northwestern Qatar, he held a Henry Luce Postdoctoral Fellowship in Asian Environmental Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He received his doctoral degree in science and technology studies (STS) from Cornell University.

Teaching

• Interdis 242 Topics in STS: Introduction to Science and Technology Studies
• Interdis 242 Topics in STS: Science, Technology, and Society
• Interdis 242 Topics in STS: Our Electrified World
• Interdis 379 Topics in STS: Examining Disasters from an STS Perspective
• Interdis 379 Topics in STS: Energy, Environment, and Society
• Interdis 379 Topics in STS: Asia in Focus

Research interests

• Social studies of science
• Social studies of technology
• History of science and technology
• Energy and environmental studies
• Disaster studies
• History of modern Indonesia
• Science journalism studies

Selected publications

• Mohsin, Anto. (2023). Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Mohsin, Anto. (2023). Peripheral Infrastructure: The Electrification of Indonesia’s Borderlands” in Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia edited by Max Hirsh and Till Mostowlansky. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
• Mohsin, Anto. (2018) “The Overseas Fellowship Program: A Technoscientific Scholarship Program in New Order Indonesia,” The Korean Journal for the History of Science 40-2 (August): 275-303.
• Mohsin, Anto. (2023). “Coping with Indonesia’s Mudflow Disaster,” in The Sociotechnical Constitution of Resilience A New Perspective on Governing Risk and Disaster edited by Sulfikar Amir. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Mohsin, Anto. (2017). “The Sidoarjo Mudflow and the Muddiness of an Environmental Disaster." Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia Spring 2017, no. 5. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. https://arcadia.ub.uni-muenchen.de/arcadia/article/view/125
• Mohsin, Anto. (2017, Spring) “Lighting ‘Paradise’: A Sociopolitical History of Electrification in Bali,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Society: An International Journal. 11:9-34.
• Mohsin, Anto. (2014, March). “Wiring the New Order: Indonesian Village Electrification and Patrimonial Technopolitics (1966-1998),” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 29(1): 63-95.
• Mohsin, Anto. (2015, April). “Jakarta Under Water: The 2007 Flood and the Debate on Jakarta’s Future Water Infrastructure” Jurnal Wilayah dan Lingkungan, 3(1): 39-58.
• Mohsin, Anto. (2016, July). Beyond Words review of W. Bernard Carlson’s Understanding the Inventions that Changed the World.  “Epic Audio-Visual History of Technology Course by a Historian of Innovation” in Technology and Culture 57(3): 657-660.
• Mohsin, Anto. (2015) Book review of Sulfikar Amir’s The Technological State in Indonesia in East Asian Science, Technology, and Society: An International Journal. 9:95–99.

Awards & Honors

• Qatar National Research Fund Undergraduate Experience Research Program Grant (19-155-5-030)
• Cornelia Ye Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award: 2013
• American-Indonesian Cultural and Educational Foundation Grant: 2013-2014