We are happy to invite you to our 5th talk of the Vienna STS Talk Series in 2024W
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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<https://univienna.zoom.us/j/63251489007?pwd=FBTgiIoQbHPTvmHhnjFwObba9mAGqZ.6>
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Best wishes,
Katrin Hackl
__________
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
[cid:image002.jpg@01DB3684.5BAE8AB0]<https://sts.univie.ac.at/>
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