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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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