I am an interdisciplinary researcher of the entanglements between microbes, embodiment, and ine-qualities. Funded by ‘la Caixa’ Foundation, my PhD (Goldsmiths, 2019) was the first critical science study on the topic. It examined how human microbiome science reinstates an immunology of inclu-sion and exclusion through the ‘biologization’ of social categories of difference (race, gender and class in particular). To date, my research has focused on (1) the socio-cultural aspects of the human microbiome and immunology; and (2) advance feminist ‘embodied’ approaches and methods to ad-dress and remedy health inequalities associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and chron-ic/recurrent infections. This includes an examination of how bioinequalities are being reproduced within science as they move from and between the laboratory, the governmental, the popular, and the embodied. I use a wide variety of theoretical perspectives including Science and Technology Studies (STS), Medical Humanities, Body Studies and Critical Global Health, and qualitative research methods including multi-sited and digital ethnographies, content and policy analysis.
I have been an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Stud-ies at Goldsmiths and Research Associate in the School of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies at The University of Edinburgh. I am part of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) research ‘Antimicrobials in Society’ (AMIS) and the EC Sonar-Global network. As a Research Associate in Genetics and Society, The University of Oxford, I am conducting re-search on the cultural implications of non-invasive pregnancy tests (NIPTs) in Taiwan and Den-mark.
My latest research, The Witch and the Microbe: Traditional Food Culturals, Health and Microbial Science, partially funded by the ‘EcoSocieties Research Fund’ (2020) (The University of Notting-ham), examines the genealogies and statuses of feminised knowledges-practices of microbial healing (local, traditional, profane) as key to resurface and update effective approaches for ‘recalcitrant in-fections’, those recurrent or persistent with no clear biomedical explanation or treatment focusing on urinary tract infections (UTIs and Long Covid). I am developing part of the project as a visiting re-searcher at the Instituto Universitario de Género, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (December 2020-June 2021).
