Professor Chris Newfield joined the ISRF in 2020 after 31 years at the University of California, Santa Barbara, most recently as Distinguished Professor of Literature and American Studies.

His academic work has focused on critical university studies, American literature since 1990, California culture and society, quantification studies, and the status of literary knowledge.

Publications include The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), The Limits of the Numerical (with Anna Alexandrova, and Stephen John; Chicago University Press, 2022) , and Metrics That Matter (with Zachary Bleemer, Mukul Kumar, Aashish Mehta & Chris Muellerleile; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023).