Penn State professor of history and bioethics and author of After the Flying Saucers Came (2024), a global history of UFO reports, alien-contact claims, and the responses of investigators, scientists, governments, and the media.
Greg Eghigian is a professor of history and bioethics at Pennsylvania State University. He earned a BA from Bard College in 1983 and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago in 1985 and 1993. His scholarship has examined the history of medicine and the human sciences, including mental illness, criminality, disability, and the ways societies classify behavior considered troubling or dangerous. He later extended that work to the modern history of supernatural and paranormal phenomena. His 2024 book, After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon, traces reports of flying saucers, UFOs, and alien contact across multiple countries and studies how witnesses, civilian investigators, scientists, governments, and news media interpreted and responded to them. The book treats the phenomenon as a subject in the history of science, technology, and culture rather than asserting that a single explanation resolves reported encounters.