The IEEE History Committee selected Michelle Spektor as the 2025 IEEE Life Members’ Fellow in Electrical History. Spektor’s research focuses on Making Biometric Citizens: Technology and Power from the British Empire to the Digital Age.
“States around the world are increasingly turning to biometric technologies to identify their citizens,” explained Spektor. “These technologies, which identify individuals through the measurement of fingerprints, faces, and other body parts, have become key components of ID cards, population databases and other identification apparatuses. Governments, in turn, have named these biometric identification systems as definitive remedies for matters ranging from border control to the delivery of services.”
Spektor is a post-doctoral scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her major field is the social and ethical responsibilities of computing. Michelle’s research has been supported by the Society for the History of Technology, Kranzberg Fellowship, the National Science Foundation, and the Fulbright Program.
The IEEE Life Member History Fellowship supports one year of full-time graduate work or one year of post-doctoral research for a scholar in this field who has received his or her PhD within the past four years in the history of IEEE’s designated fields.
