Xan Chacko

Xan Chacko is an Assistant Teaching Professor and Interim Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) at Brown University, where they also serve as Director of Undergraduate Studies. A feminist science studies scholar, Chacko focuses on natural history, ecology, agriculture, and conservation through the lens of colonial extraction and climate catastrophe, with seed banking as a central case study in their research on biodiversity conservation.

Chacko's educational background includes:

• PhD in Science and Technology Studies, University of California at Davis (2018)
• MSc, Imperial College (2008)
• BA, Wellesley College (2005)

Research examines how data practices in seed banks ignore complexities of colonial histories while claiming to secure humanity's future, revealing how classification systems erase local and indigenous knowledge. Chacko analyzes the relationship between physical seeds and their metadata, demonstrating how data storage choices reflect scientists' expectations for the future. Their feminist STS approach extends to teaching data, algorithms, and code's societal impacts.

Analysis of recent publications shows consistent focus on seed banking's colonial legacies, invisible labor in science, and data's role in biodiversity narratives. The work spans history of science, feminist theory, and political ecology, highlighting gaps in data systems that perpetuate colonial power structures while proposing alternative epistemic frameworks.

Chacko supervises undergraduate students from data and computer science pursuing STS as an additional concentration. They participated in Brown's Data Science Institute (DSI) faculty fellowship and are developing a new course on data and algorithms with a DSI fellow, bridging computational science and critical STS perspectives.

As co-editor of 'Invisible Labour in Modern Science' and contributor to collaborative projects like the DSI fellowship, Chacko engages with institutional initiatives while directing the STS program's undergraduate curriculum and research directions.