Datensatz #358649 - GSI Repository

DFG project G:(GEPRIS)556660619

MicroFlows: Sozio-mikrobielle Beziehungen und urbaner Wasserstoffwechsel in der bakteriellen Stadt

Coordinator	Dr. Aaron Bradshaw
Grant period	2025 -
Funding body	Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
	DFG
Identifier	G:(GEPRIS)556660619

Note: Within urban contexts, society’s relationship with microorganisms has often been understood in terms of pathogenicity and contagion. My project investigates microbial agency and relationality beyond disease to provide a more nuanced mapping of the urban socio-microbial nexus. Specifically, MicroFlows takes seriously the roles of microbial communities in urban water metabolism through empirical fieldwork on two urban rivers and their extended infrastructure: the River Lea in East London, and the Panke river in Berlin. The project draws on state-of-the-art developments in more-than-human geography, urban political ecology, critical physical geography, and environmental microbiology to develop a genuinely interdisciplinary and methodologically experimental project. Overall, MicroFlows will chart the heterogenous cultural, political, and ecological valences of human-microbe relations in urban water metabolism via three key aims: 1) Historically, urban rivers have been polluted and neglected. Through alignment of critical physical geography with evidentiary materialism, this project argues that microbial communities exposed to anthropogenic stressors can be enrolled as posthuman biosensors to expand accounts of urban pollution. By bringing microbial genetic ‘memories’ of historical pollution into conversation with archival sources, MicroFlows aims to develop a more-than-human (re)telling of the socio-ecological transformation of urban rivers. 2) In the more-than-human co-production of urban water metabolism, microbial communities have critical roles in wastewater treatment, pollutant detoxification, and ecological regeneration projects. I will investigate these oft-overlooked sites and scales of human-microbe relationality via development of a novel 'microbial ethnography'. Thus, by paying empirical attention to humans and microorganisms, I aim to provide novel accounts of urban water metabolism within a critical multispecies urban political ecological framework. 3) Human-microbial relations are in a state of profound flux. Whilst aims 1 and 2 focus on already-existing relations, aim 3 participates in the creation of novel and convivial interactions between citizens and urban river-associated microbial communities. Drawing from parallel developments in ‘participatory microbiology’ and ‘microbial participation’, I will convene citizen-led microbiological experiments in the Panke river. These experiments aim to enrol microorganisms as ‘co-investigators’ into issues of river pollution and ecological degradation to rescale urban ecological politics. This project benefits from rigorous training at the host institution, strong networks for interdisciplinary knowledge transfer, and will forge a strong pathway for my career development. In addition to a series of academic outputs, MicroFlows will also engage a wider non-specialist audience via a range of workshops and a book proposal.

Recent Publications

There are no publications

Datensatz erzeugt am 2025-03-20, letzte Änderung am 2025-03-20

Ähnliche Datensätze

Zum persönlichen Korb hinzufügen
Export als Author List with IDs BibTeX (UTF-8), EndNote XML, EndNote Text, RIS, MARC, Print MARC, MARCXML, DC,
Request correction
Submit fulltext

GSI Homepage \| GSI Library \| English Deutsch \| Gast :: Anmelden GSI Repository
Suchen	Absenden	Personalisieren Ihre Benachrichtigungen Ihre Körbe Ihre Suchanfragen	Hilfe