We are happy to invite you to our 5th talk of the Vienna STS Talk Series in 2024W

STS Talk by Louise Whiteley   

Medical Museion & CBMR, University of Copenhagen   

December 02, 2024 05:00 PM-06:30 PM

Attempting the Impossible: Communicating Microbe-Human Relations in a Research Museum.

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.

Organiser

Department of Science and Technology Studies

Location

STS Seminar Room, NIG, St. II. 6th floor, Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna & online via zoom

Best wishes,
Katrin Hackl

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Mag. Katrin Hackl

Research Support & Communication

Department of Science and Technology Studies

University of Vienna

Universitätsstraße 7 /II/ 6th floor (NIG)
1010 Vienna / Austria

Tel.: 0043-1-4277-496007