The SoP25 Teaching Fellows

Eric Alston is a Scholar in Residence in the Finance Division and the Faculty Director of the Hernando de Soto Capital Markets Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. Eric’s research and teaching is centered in the fields of law and economics and institutional and organizational analysis, which he applies to research questions in the development of rights along frontiers, the design and implementation of constitutions, and digital governance with a particular focus on distributed networks. Eric also consults with numerous cryptocurrency networks and DAOs on their governance design challenges.https://www.colorado.edu/business/leeds-directory/faculty/eric-c-alston

Andrés Monroy-Hernández is an associate professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. Previously, he led a Social Augmented Reality lab at Snap Inc. and was a social computing researcher at Microsoft Research. He was named one of the 35 Innovators under 35 by the MIT Technology Review and one of the most influential Latinos in Tech by CNET. Andrés holds a master’s and Ph.D. from MIT, where he led the creation of the Scratch online community. https://www.andresmh.com

Helena Rong is an Assistant Professor Faculty Fellow of Interactive Media Business (IMB) at NYU Shanghai and affiliated with the Program on Creativity + Innovation (PCI). Her research operates at the nexus of urban studies, design, technology studies, data science, and public policy. She focuses on leveraging innovative technologies and methodologies to foster social impact in urban decision-making, aligning incentives across diverse stakeholders to maximize the societal benefits of technological innovation, and developing adaptive urban interfaces that respond to evolving community needs. Rong holds a PhD in Urban Planning, a Master of Science in Architecture and Urbanism, and a Bachelor of Architecture. https://shanghai.nyu.edu/academics/faculty/directory/helena-rong

Dr. Vaughn TAN is a Singapore- and Marseille-based researcher and consultant on building strategy for uncertainty. He wrote The Uncertainty Mindset (Columbia Univ. Press, 2020), on using uncertainty as a tool for designing adaptable organizations. Vaughn is a Fellow of the Singapore Government’s Centre for Strategic Futures, an executive board member of Rethink Food, and honorary associate professor of strategy at University College London. He has a PhD in Organizational Behavior and Sociology from Harvard University. www.vaughntan.org

Chen Qiufan (a.k.a. Stanley Chan) (b. Shantou, Guangdong) is an award-winning Chinese speculative fiction author, and a translator, curator and futurist, Berggruen Institute Fellow, and Research Scholar for MacMillan Center of Yale University. He focuses on issues of climate change and the environment, artificial intelligence and cybernetic society, and reflecting on how to incorporate ancient Chinese philosophies into the narrative framework for constructing a future technological society. His works include the debut novel Waste Tide and AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future (co-authored with Dr. Kai-Fu Lee).He has garnered numerous literary awards, including Grand Prix L’Imaginale, Germany Best Business Book of the Year, and China’s Galaxy and Xingyun (Nebula) Awards, etc. In English translation, he has been featured in markets such as Clarkesworld, Pathlight, Lightspeed, Interzone, and F&SF. www.linkedIn.com/in/chenqiufan

I am Wang Yige, Assistant Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Trained in social science and quantitative historical analysis at HKUST and Peking University, my research explores the interplay between technology, language, and social transformation. My Ph.D. examined how the rise of a modern newspaper market contributed to early democratization in China. At BFSU, I extend this work by investigating how digital technologies and global communication shape cultural values and cross-cultural understanding in both Chinese and international contexts.

Giovanni Merlino Ph.D. is Associate Professor in Computer Science Engineering at the University of Messina.His research is centered on distributed systems, focusing on IoT and Cyber-Physical Systems modeled as software-defined infrastructure, especially in terms of hybrid IT/OT convergence and decentralization patterns. He played a key role in designing the Stack4Things middleware. He is co-founder of smartme.io, an academic spin-off company, and co-inventor and holder of a patent.He has been elected National Secretary of the italian Association of Fixed-Term Researchers in 2022, a role held until attaining academic tenure in 2023. He has been appointed Secretary Emeritus of ARTeD in 2024. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1469-7860 https://mstdn.social/@gmerlino

Ben Zucker engages in acts of creative juxtaposition and speculation as a composer, audiovisual artist, and multi-instrumentalist. Acclaimed as a “master of improvisation” (IMPOSE Magazine), and “more than a little bit remarkable” (Free Jazz Blog), they have contributed to experimental music scenes across North America and the UK with “stirring compositions…built on a lifetime of musical curiosity” (Chicago Reader), as well as albums, multimedia situations, and frequent performances on vibraphone, brass, voice, and electronics. They currently live in Chicago, working as a freelance musician, lecturer, curator, and President of New Music Chicago.

Felix works on decentralized governance innovations at the intersection of technology and democracy. His mission is to help design a new generation of institutions capable of tackling today’s complex, planetary-scale challenges. Bridging often siloed—or even opposing—communities, he connects legacy institutions, governance radicals, and emerging tech ecosystems. Felix is affiliated with the TUM Think Tank, the Harvard Kennedy School, and BlockchainGov. With a background in science and technology studies, governance theory, and systems thinking, he brings a transdisciplinary lens to reimagining governance for a more distributed, pluralistic, and resilient future.https://www.linkedin.com/in/beer-felix/

My name is Martin Harrigan. I am a lecturer, researcher, and software engineer. I teach cryptography and blockchains at South East Technological University (SETU) in the Republic of Ireland. I have a long-standing interest in decentralised systems: I have (co-)authored several publications relating to blockchain analysis, decentralised exchanges, and decentralised governance. I am interested in ProtocolStudies as a means of framing blockchains in a broader context. The modules I teach focus on topics such as consensus mechanisms and smart contract development. But I want to zoom out. What if we treated protocols as the main event? Blockchains become the infrastructure where our digital rulebooks — for everything from money flows to community governance — are stress-tested in real time. It connects the technical details to bigger questions such as how the rules shape the ways in which we organise.

Primavera De Filippi is an artist and legal scholar at Harvard University, exploring the intersection between art, law and technology, focusing specifically on the legal and political implications of blockchain technology and AI. Her artistic practice instantiates the key findings of her research in the physical world, creating blockchain-based lifeforms that evolve and reproduce themselves as people feed them with cryptocurrencies.More info at https://pdefilippi.com