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Dear colleagues, this may be of interest to folks working in feminist epistemologies:

Please consider submitting an abstract for the open panel on microbial methods at the next 4S/EASST conference<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.easst4s2024.net%2F&data=05%7C02%7CFEAST-L%40listserv.jmu.edu%7Cf68b3bbebf624436d15308dc2676348b%7Ce9333c23cac742f499895cee3d4a79c0%7C0%7C0%7C638427536326868536%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=z6e5iZrYTV4SY9inJBn8HI4nDf59I2EX30xIibp4pbU%3D&reserved=0> (16-19 July 2024, Amsterdam), with emphasis on feminist, multispecies, more-than-visual ways of knowing microbes. Think about how we come to know microbes by way of touch, tastes, sounds, smells, proxies, ferments, compost, gut feelings, et cetera. Keywords include: sensory methods, experimental methods, methods for multispecies and more-than-human encounters, alternative epistemologies, feminist new materialism, nonwestern perspectives, and multiple ways of knowing.

You can find the full description here:
https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnomadit.co.uk%2Fconference%2Feasst-4s2024%2Fp%2F14151&data=05%7C02%7CFEAST-L%40listserv.jmu.edu%7Cf68b3bbebf624436d15308dc2676348b%7Ce9333c23cac742f499895cee3d4a79c0%7C0%7C0%7C638427536327024826%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=%2FHX43H5SF%2BUXEg9COUpko9VjB9at7blSh8QdpPx83NQ%3D&reserved=0
as well as at the bottom of this email.

Abstracts are due 12 February 2024

Please direct all queries to [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

All best from afar,
M
—
Maya Hey, PhD
Centre for the Social Study of Microbes<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsocialmicrobes.org%2F&data=05%7C02%7CFEAST-L%40listserv.jmu.edu%7Cf68b3bbebf624436d15308dc2676348b%7Ce9333c23cac742f499895cee3d4a79c0%7C0%7C0%7C638427536327024826%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=TZGYnLgiPgci3JHpzfd7qV5kgyLX66ZSvhd2SWtWAgg%3D&reserved=0>

LONG ABSTRACT: Microbial Methods and Practices for Doing STS Otherwise
     What STS methods—including tools and methodological frameworks—can detect, document, and make sense of microbes? What are their affordances and limitations? And how can these social scientific methods expand the ways in which microbes are studied? This panel examines situated methods-in-action.
     For centuries, microbial knowledge has developed in tandem with advances in biomedical and technoscientific apparatuses. While scholars of microbial STS have—and can continue to—collaborate with scientists and laboratories, a broader social scientific inquiry into microbes has come to a point where there is a need to develop our own methodological tools and encourage transformations from within. Given the so-called microbial turn in STS and adjacent fields, an ontological reckoning of/through microbes warrants a critical engagement with methodological questions.
    This panel takes up the doing of methods as its problem knot, with attention to how and whether novel methods work in microbial inquiry. The panel brings together two foci: (1) experimental and sensory methods, and (2) practices like fermenting and composting that offer analytical insights of-and-with microbes. Both foci engage with how to go about studying microbes in social scientific settings, with some approaches relying on direct contact (e.g., making pickles, tasting them) for microbes to matter, while other approaches rely on analytical proxies (e.g., non-potable water, an unhealthy body, a fallow field) to indicate microbial presence, their metabolisms, or their transformative effects. With these diverse approaches in mind, this panel decenters laboratory studies, as well as anthropocentric, eurocentric, ocularcentric, and verbocentric modes of engaging with microbes.
    We invite paper presentations, but in the spirit of doing methods otherwise, we also welcome multimodal formats (e.g., embodied and experiential workshops, demonstrations of in-progress prototypes, on-site/real-time performances) that can be implemented within the time/space of the panel.

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