N. Katherine Hayles

Nancy Katherine Hayles (born 1943) is an American scholar who focuses on the interconnections "between science, literature, and technology". Originally a research chemist in the 1960s, she then earned her doctorate in English literature and became a distinguished professor. In the humanities, her work, How We Became Posthuman (1999) is a seminal foundation for posthumanism. In literary criticism, she is most notable for her contribution to the fields of literature and science, particularly American literature. Throughout her work, (from the 1970s through 2025), Hayles has examined how humans interact with technology and media. She explores how digital technologies affect humanities research. As one of the early and leading scholars of electronic literature, Hayles introduced digital literature concepts to a generation of scholars and writers (such as M.D. Coverley and Stephanie Strickland) in the 1990s through her courses for the National Endowment of Humanities.

Hayles was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015 and elected to the Academy of Europe the same year. As of March 2025, she is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and the James B. Duke Professor Emerita from Duke University.