Zoe Lee is a designer, entrepreneur, and socio-technical researcher whose work focuses on the cultural and systems-level determinants of climate action. She investigates how climate change emerges from intertwined ecological and social injustices, and how cultural norms, institutional practices, and technological systems must evolve together for real climate adaptation to take hold. Her work analyzes how climate interventions operate within complex socio-technical systems, and what makes them legible, actionable, and desirable to the communities most affected. Her research has been published and presented internationally, and her work has appeared in Stereo Saints, Barley Field Magazine, Vox, MIT Technology Review, ArtNews, and national broadcast media. She co-directs BEAM, a research-led creative studio for the climate transition, and is a Research Affiliate at the MIT Media Lab’s Community Biotechnology Initiative.
At MacDowell, Lee and Annie Chen developed TIDELANDS 2100, an immersive XR work and narrative game set along a future Rhode Island coastline transformed by sea level rise. During the residency, they focused on writing the game’s narrative arc from a first-person perspective, shaping a story of return, adaptation, and life beyond displacement. The project constructs a protopian climate future encountered through exploration, where evolving ecologies, community infrastructures, and emerging technologies are experienced as part of everyday life. In 2025, Chen and Lee were awarded the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Make Art Grant and the Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Art Grant and completed residency at the Fish Factory Creative Centre in Iceland. They will return to the East Fjords for the Þórsmörk Residency Program in June 2026. They were also named fellows of the EY Intelligent Realities Lab. In 2026, Lee was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Chen and Lee presented TIDELANDS 2100 at the DEMO Festival at the New Museum in June 2026.
