Eurograd message

                Dear all,

Please see below a call for papers for a 1-day workshop titled 'How might be
think dose and dose-response? An exploratory workshop on measuring
practices'.

The workshop will be held at the University of Liverpool, UK on June 19th,
2025.

Designed as a small event, we aim to invite discussions around what dose is
and relatedly, explore what it might mean to do bodily relations with our
environments with and beyond the dose-response paradigm. Bringing together
interested parties from science and technology studies, critical public
health, the environmental humanities, medical sociology, anthropology, and the
history and philosophy of science, this workshop is interested in probing the
relevance, limitations and implications of current understandings of dose and
dose-response for practice, public policy and everyday life.

Please submit your 500-word abstract and short description of yourself to
m.k.furbo@liverpool.ac.uk by Friday May 2nd. Depending on interest, we may
have to select amongst the abstracts received. You will be notified within a
week after the deadline.

This is a free event with lunch and refreshments provided for attendees.
Hybrid participation is also possible. A limited travel budget is available
for presenters.
The event marks the end of the ESRC-funded project 'Why the folate controversy
persists: Mapping the Biosocial Complexities of Folate' (Nov. 2022- Jun.
2025).

The event is organised in collaboration with The Centre for Health, Arts,
Society and Environment
(CHASE) at the University of Liverpool.

Kind regards,
Mette Kragh-Furbo and Bryan Lim


CALL FOR PAPERS

How might be think dose and dose-response? An exploratory workshop on
measuring practices

The word 'dose' is used in modern written and spoken English, to mean 'a
measured amount of something' (The Cambridge Dictionary) - this can either be
in literal and material sense (e.g. a dose of medicine) or in a metaphorical
and figurative sense (e.g. a dose of his own medicine). One of the more common
words in the English language, its widespread use may also mean that it
remains somewhat 'black-boxed': what exactly is implicated when the word
'dose' is used? Stated differently, if 'dose' is taken to be a measuring
practice, how does something become measurable and how are measurements made
possible in the first place? Consequently, what sort of questions, theoretical
frameworks, technical tools, concerns, processes, interests, problems and
solutions are entangled with dose-as-measuring-practice?

Like dose, the function of dose-response is also to measure; it differs
however, in that dose-response is specifically interested in assessing the
magnitude of the response of an organism to a stimulus or stressor, over a
certain time period. While the concept of dose-response is one of 'the most
basic principle of toxicology' (Gilbert, 2004) and has obvious importance for
the field of medicine and the practice of healthcare (e.g. the development of
clinical guidelines or nutritional recommendations), the widespread appeal of
the principle in a range of other disciplines also illustrates both its
relevance and utility as a paradigm for doing bodily relations with our
environments more broadly. For example, in setting safety standards for
environmental chemicals and hazards, the collaborations between experts and
institutional and policy actors are often dominated by efforts to work out and
define thresholds in dose-response curves. Dose and dose-response can thus be
said to be intimately related: what is deemed to be a 'safe' dose is often a
decision made based on dose-response measurements.

In the social science literature, the principle of dose-response has been
subject to much scrutiny, most notably in critiques of risk assessments in
toxicology and regulatory science (Murphy, 2006; Nash, 2008; Vogel, 2008;
2014; Cram, 2016; Nash, 2017; Mansfield, 2020; Packer, 2022; Demortain, 2023;
Mansfield et al. 2023), including the problematic nature of basing risk
assessments on a threshold model of harm, especially when more recent studies
on epigenetics, endocrine disruption, microbiomics and microplastics clearly
complicates any simple or linear understanding of the modes, temporality and
place of exposure (Murphy, 2006; Langston, 2010; Landecker, 2011; Guthman and
Mansfield, 2013; Liboiron, 2015; Kramm, 2023; Rossman and Muller, 2024). The
translation of the dose-response concept into other disciplines, especially in
the behavioural sciences and public health, have also been criticised on at
least two fronts. Firstly, as an overextended analogy that has been used 'to
simplify complex ideas and to act as a regulatory form of behavioural
governance' (Whitelaw, 2012: 427) and secondly, even when limitations to the
dose-response concept are acknowledged, the response can often be to introduce
'precautionary measures' that cannot address the root issues that plague
dose-response models in the first place - assumptions of linearity and
unitemporality (Durocher, 2024).

In helping us navigate a world that is becoming ever more toxic (Preciado,
2013), the principle of dose-response is surely important. Yet, because
dose-response practices never only measure - for in describing the effects
that an organism experiences when it is exposed to something, it
simultaneously also shapes the ways we do and can co-exist with our
environment and others around us (Barad, 2007; Haraway 2016) - it is also
imperative that attention is paid to how dose-response is practiced. Proposing
that dose-response be understood also as a world-making practice because of
its ability to bring various bodies into relation with one another, we thus
hope to explore with others as part of this workshop, different ways of doing
dose-response that foreground not only its ethical nature but also its
potential to generate both heterogeneity and homogeneity.

Call for papers
The aim of the workshop is to bring together scholars interested in the
concept of dose so that we may not only collectively develop new ways of
thinking dose but also address the novel kinds of questions that might
accompany these new conceptualisations of dose.
To this end, we are interested in hearing from others who like us, are keen to
elaborate on current thinking on dose and engage with dose-related questions
in both a theoretical and empirical context. In addition to the questions
raised above, some other questions that may be of interest include:

  *   What is dose?
  *   What is the relationship between dose and dose-response?
  *   What can dose and/or dose-response do?
  *   What questions do dose and dose-response raise about the doing of
relation with both our environment and others?
  *   How does dose and dose-response become relevant to policy or everyday
life?

We encourage contributions from different disciplinary fields, including, but
not limited to, critical public health, environmental humanities, history,
medical sociology, anthropology, history and philosophy of science, and
science and technology studies.

Please submit your 500-word abstract and short description of yourself to
m.k.furbo@liverpool.ac.uk by Friday May 2nd.
Depending on interest, we may have to select amongst the abstracts received.
You will be notified within a week after the deadline.

References
Barad, K. M. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Cram, S. (2016), 'Living in dose: Nuclear Work and the Politics of Permissible
Exposure', Public Culture  28 (3)
Demortain, D. (2023), 'How scientists become experts - or don't: Social
organisation of research and engagement in scientific advice in toxicology
laboratory', Social Studies of Science 54 (3)
Durocher, M. (2024), 'What's in the blood? Temporalities at play in
Diet-related  risk management testing practices', Science, Technology and
Human Values OnlineFirst
Guthman, J. and Mansfield, B. (2013), 'The implications of environmental
epigenetics: A new direction for geographic inquiry on health, space and
nature-society relations', Progress in Human Geography 37 (4)
Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble. Duke University Press.
Kramm, J. (2023), 'Agential cuts of regulatory science practices - the case of
microplastics', Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 7 (3)
Landecker, H. (2011), 'Food as exposure: Nutritional epigenetics and the new
metabolism', Biosocieties 6 (2)
Langston, N. (2010) Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES.
Liboiron, M. (2015), 'Redefining pollution and action: The matter of plastic',
Journal of Material Culture 21 (1): 87-110
Mansfield, B. (2020), 'Deregulatory Science: Chemical risk analysis in Trump's
EPA', Social Studies of Science 51 (1): 28-50
Mansfield, B. et al. (2024), 'A new critical social science research agenda on
pesticides', Agriculture and Human Values 41: 395-412
Murphy, M. (2006) Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty:
Environmental Politics, Technoscience and Women Workers.
Nash, L. (2008), 'Purity and Danger: Historical reflections on the regulations
of environmental pollutants', Environmental History 13 (4): 651-658
Packer, M. (2022), 'Becoming with toxicity: Chemical epigenetics as
"Racialising and Sexualising assemable"', Hypatia 37 (1)
Preciado, P. (2013). Testojunkie: sex, drugs, and biopolitics in the
pharmacopornographic era. New York: Feminist Press.
Rossman, S. and Muller, R. (2024), 'Toxicity as process: Tracing a new
epigenetic regime of im/perceptibility in environmental toxicology', Science
as Culture OnlineFirst
Tsatsakis, A. M., Vassilipoulou, L., Kovatsi, L., Tsitsimpikou, C., Karamanou,
M., Leon, G., Liesivuori, J., Hayes, A. W., and Spandidos, D. A. (2018), 'The
dose response principle from philosophy to modern toxicology: the impact of
ancient philosophy and medicine in modern toxicology science', Toxicology
Reports 5: 1107-1113
Vogel, S. (2008), 'From 'the dose makes the poison' to 'the timing makes the
poison': Conceptualising risk in the synthetic age', Environmental History 13
(4): 667-673
Vogel, S. (2013) Is it safe? BPA and the struggle to define the safety of
chemicals. University of California Press
Whitelaw, S. (2012), 'The emergence of a 'dose-response' analogy in the health
improvement domain of public health: a critical review', Critical Public
Health 22 (4): 427-440



--
Dr Mette Kragh-Furbo
Lecturer in Sociology of Public Health
Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems
University of Liverpool

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