Abstract

If life is always biosocial, organisms are socially connected in ways that influence their situated biologies. Based on this dictum, the presentation grapples with such connections and explores them both as connectors in networks and threads in meshworks, using this analytical lens to better understand how work environments in factory settings in India and Nepal influence the development and spread of antibiotics resistance. The analysis intends to combine scales form the genomic to the microbial to the human through their environments and back. 

Short Bio

Jens Seeberg is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University and PIREAU fellow at AIAS. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he led the anthropological part of the project How Democracies Cope with Covid-19 and co-supervised nine ethnographic fieldwork projects on different forms of vulnerability. He is currently leading several projects, including "Antimicrobial Resistance and Labour Migration across Healthcare Boundaries in Northern South Asia" (India and Nepal) and "People, Pigs and Microbes" (Denmark), both on the biosocial dynamics of antibiotic resistance across species boundaries. His recent books include "Biosocial Worlds" (open access, UCL press) and "Configuring Contagion" (Berghahn Publ.).

What is an AIAS Seminar?

The AIAS Seminar Series is a session of seminars held by the AIAS fellows, AIAS Visiting or Tandem Fellows or by other speakers proposed by the fellows. In each seminar, a fellow will present and discuss her/his current research and work-in-progress to an interdisciplinary audience for 30 minutes, closing off with 30 minutes for questions, comments and discussion.

All seminars are in-person and held in English. To attend online, please contact Sofia Bentsen at sofia@aias.au.dk by 9:00am on the day of the semimar as the latest to request a link.