Montag, 02. Dezember 2024, 17:00 - 18:30 iCal
Vienna STS Talks
STS Talk by Louise Whiteley
Attempting the Impossible: Communicating Microbe-Human Relations in a Research Museum.
Seminarraum STS, NIG, 1010 Wien, Universitätsstraße 7/II/6. Stock und online via zoom
Universitätssraße 7, 1010 Wien
Vortrag
Abstract
The idea that the microbes in our guts can affect our mental wellbeing has moved from niche interest to mainstream discourse over the last decade. Based on early-stage laboratory research with non-human animals, the proposition has nonetheless spread rapidly into popular media, commercial products, and alternative medical practices. The Microbes on the Mind project started from a curiosity about what this means for thinking about the human as an everyday, experiencing self in constant negotiation with concepts, practices, and systems of health. We investigated how microbe-mind relations are communicated, felt, and experienced, and asked whether this communication helps activate the potentially positive consequences of thinking about human wellbeing as partly-microbial. Throughout we experimented with offering new forms of communication and experience within a university museum, addressing the difficulties of communicating about relations between invisible multitudes and human subjectivity. In my talk I will share examples of our research and public engagement – from a podcast to an art-science exhibition. I will also discuss how this hybrid project was informed by an STS lens on what microbiome research means and does, and reflect on how we applied STS principles of mirroring the complexity of the world in research to our curatorial practice in the museum.
Biography
Louise Whiteley is an associate professor and curator at Medical Museion and CBMR, at the University of Copenhagen. Louise researches how biomedicine moves and shapes everyday ideas about what is to be human, through popular culture and public engagement. Within this frame, they have looked at neuroimaging, microbiome research, metabolic science, and most recently translational stem cell research. Louise also curates exhibitions, art-science collaborations, and public engagement events, in dialogue with research, and is passionate about the importance of communicating values within interdisciplinary collaboration.
Zur Webseite der Veranstaltung
Veranstalter
Institut für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung
Kontakt
Katrin Hackl
Institut für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung
01427749607
katrin.hackl@univie.ac.at
Erstellt am Dienstag, 12. November 2024, 15:31
Letzte Änderung am Mittwoch, 13. November 2024, 09:28