Matthew N Eisler

Matthew N. Eisler is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrated Science and Technology at James Madison University. He studies the relationship between ideology, material practices, and the social relations of contemporary science and engineering at the intersection of energy, environmental, and industrial policy. His first book, Overpotential: Fuel Cells, Futurism, and the Making of a Power Panacea, was published by Rutgers University Press in 2012.

I hold a PhD in the history of science and technology from the University of Alberta. I study the relationship between ideology and material practices of contemporary science and engineering and the implications for energy, environmental, and industrial policy. My first book, Overpotential: Fuel Cells, Futurism, and the Making of a Power Panacea, was published by Rutgers University Press in 2012. I have been affiliated with Western University, the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

My methodology contrasts semi-structured interviews and oral histories with close textual analysis of various genres of science and engineering writing. Among other current projects, I am investigating the ways actors involved in advanced battery research and development construct metrics of performance, expectations, and expert authority. I am also researching my second book. Entitled Green Morality, Virtuous Engineering, and Sustainable Mobility, it explores the co-production of the technoscience, culture, and social order of alternative energy/transportation systems in late modernity.