I am a media theorist, philosopher, creative writer and consultant based in Los Angeles. In 2023, I received my PhD in the Film and Visual Studies program at Harvard University.

My academic work considers how media theory may provide a vital ethical framework. It may help us to engage the capacity for technical forms – especially forms like film and museum installation –  to reform our sensibilities of collective flourishing, for positive ends. In other words: by referring to technical forms as “media,” we’re priming ourselves, whether we know it or not, to attend to these forms as they shape our collective environments – and how these environments can re-shape us for the better. 

My creative work engages this capacity on a ground level. I am the cowriter, with E.C. Timmer, of a feature film called Chambers Bay, currently in pre-production. I love consulting with creatives about their works in progress, and helping the hone their creative and formal sensibilities. (For creative consulting inquiries, please email: nathan [at] nathandroberts.com.)

I love teaching. I have acted as a Teaching Fellow for Harvard College students in “The Art of Film,” “American Dreams Made In Hollywood,” and “Nazi Cinema: The Art of Propaganda
– in addition to teaching versions of these courses for Harvard Extension School. I also teach the courses “Why Do Movies Move Us? The Philosophy and Psychology of Filmgoing” and “Crisis Journalism: Writing Articles and Essays in a State of Emergency” for the Harvard Pre-College Summer Program.

I have also worked as a film curator for the Harvard Film Archive. (I am particularly proud of my series s Caught in the Net: The Early Internet in the Paranoid Imagination, in partnership with the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston.) I am also on the editorial team for the experimental online publication Between Lands.

Lastly, I am the author of a memoir about media called Surface Tensions: Searching for Sacred Connection in a Media-Saturated World. My non-academic nonfiction considered media theory, philosophy, and theology from a first-person POV. It has been featured on TIME.com and in the Los Angeles Review of Books,

I love a dog named Luna. She is very cute.