Joana Formosinho
Fredericiagade 18
joana.formosinho@sund.ku.dk
https://www.cbmr.ku.dk
Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies
I'm an interdisciplinary scholar of the life sciences, currently completing a PhD. I use STS ethnography to investigate how microbiome research (the study of human health and biology through our resident microbes) is challenging representations of the human body in its boundaries— with the environment and other species.
How can representations of the human be re-informed through detailed engagement with the role of host-microbiota interplay in the making, maintaining and disrupting of human bodies and health?
Historically and culturally-specific understandings of the human (origin stories, visual imagery, concepts such as 'body' and 'environment') travel back and forth between biology and society— influencing the production of science, policy, and individual action. My research is oriented to intervention at the intersection of public health and sustainability — and translation between biology and society.
With a background in the biological sciences, I observe and participate in debates across disciplines (biology, biomedicine and HPS); conduct interviews and survey the literature. I also collaborate with artists in processes of knowledge translation into the public realm— most recently, with the installation 'Co-metabolise' developed with Baum and Leahy, for the exhibition "the World is In You", hosted at Kunsthal Charlottenborg.
I hold a BSc in Zoology from University of London and an MSc in Holistic Science from University of Plymouth/ Schumacher College— and have conducted Behavioural Ecology research at the universities of Cambridge and British Columbia. Outside academia, I have worked as a consultant researcher and writer in the NGO sector and corporate pharma, and have taught at Schumacher College in the UK. I'm a member of the student advisory committee for the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB). I speak English, Portuguese and Spanish.
By email: joana.formosinho@sund.ku.dk
By telephone: +45 50153190
"Microbiota, symbiosis and individuality summer school" meeting report