Sarvnaz Lotfi

Visiting Assistant Professor

Sarvnaz ("Sarvy") Lotfi is a Visiting Assistant Professor in CMU’s Department of History and specializes in the history of R&D and economic thought. She holds a PhD in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Virginia Tech, an MA in International Affairs from The New School, and a BA in Neuroscience and Anthropology with Honors from Oberlin College. Prior to joining CMU, Dr. Lotfi found great joy in teaching humanities and engineering students, first at Virginia Tech and later as a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Loyola University Maryland. She served as a Visiting Research Fellow at Duke University’s Center for the History of Political Economy and joined the book review advisory board of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought. 

Dr. Lotfi's first essay, "The Stock Market and the Space Age" (2023), is published in the business history journal, Enterprise & Society, and informs a second essay currently under revision with the title, "The Assetization of R&D 'On Faith As We Do Religion.'" She is due to present the draft of a third essay, "The History of R&D Loopholes, or Why You Pay More Taxes Than Amazon," at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S). Also in the works is a new project charting the evolution of R&D contracting and renegotiation practices during the early years of the Cold War as well as plans to update her dissertation, Capitalizing the “Measure of Our Ignorance”: A Pragmatist Genealogy of R&D, for publication as an academic monograph.