Samira Daneshvar is an environmental historian and theorist who works at the intersection of science, media, and technology. Her first book project, Thinking with Things: A Matter of Objects in the Science of Radiation, is an intellectual history of the discovery of new material properties in studies of radiation at the turn of the twentieth century. She shows how shadow pictures, produced by innovative visualization techniques, transformed ordinary objects into wonders of scientific inquiry, ultimately leading to the conceptualization of matter as porous and permeable to environmental influences. As a Mellon Fellow in Democracy and Landscape at Dumbarton Oaks (2026-2027), she will be working on wildlife of post-nuclear landscapes in North America.