Jeffrey Schnapp

Jeffrey Schnapp is the founder and faculty director of metaLAB (at) Harvard and faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. He holds the Carl A. Pescosolido Chair in Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, with an affiliation in the Graduate School of Design’s Department of Architecture. Trained as a medievalist, he has built a career around knowledge design, cultural history, and media theory and history, publishing widely on subjects from libraries and information technology to mobility, speed, and modern design. His books include The Library Beyond the Book (with Matthew Battles), The Electric Information Age Book, FuturPiaggio, and, most recently, Storia rapida della velocità (2025), with Quickening: An Anthropology of Speed forthcoming from Zone Books. He has also edited and translated a trilogy of works by the designer Bruno Munari. A prolific curator, he has worked with institutions including the Triennale di Milano, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Cantor Arts Center, and the Wolfsonian-FIU, and led the development of the Trento Tunnels, a pair of highway tunnels in northern Italy repurposed as an experimental history museum, along with “living” archive projects in Bologna and Parma. Moving freely between scholarship, exhibition-making, and entrepreneurship, he co-founded the robotics company Piaggio Fast Forward, where he served as CEO and later Chief Visionary Officer, and whose gita robotic carrier won a Red Dot “Best of the Best” award.