Sasha Bergstrom-Katz

Sasha Bergstrom-Katz is a Berlin-based artist, researcher, and writer affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) as a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow. She holds a PhD in Psychosocial Studies from Birkbeck, University of London, and an MFA in Fine Art from the University of California, Irvine.

• Current affiliations: Leverhulme Trust Postdoctoral Fellow (2024–2026)
• Former affiliations: BS-Projects Fellowship (2021), Erasmus+ Visiting PhD Researcher at University of Groningen (2021–2022)

Her research focuses on the material cultures of intelligence testing in the U.S., examining their intersections with eugenics, military recruitment, and neoliberal institutional practices. She employs artistic methods to reframe scientific objects as performative artifacts, analyzing how tests function as 'readymade performances' through manuals, props, and standardized procedures.

Recent publications and projects include co-editing The Material Force of Categories special issue (History of Human Sciences, 2025) and the Psychotechne exhibition (2023). Her 2023 PhD thesis On Intelligence Tests: Psychological Objects and Their Subjects investigates the aesthetic and historical dimensions of intelligence testing.

Scientific awards include the Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2023), Wellcome Trust funding (2022–2023), and multiple University of California, Irvine fellowships and grants (2015–2018, 2016–2018). She has taught at Bard College Berlin, Birkbeck, CalArts, and the University of California, Irvine.