With advancements in environmental metagenomics and microbiome research, microbes have gained public and commercial attention and have become a site of hope and promise of up-and-coming bioeconomies. Interventions into and optimization of microbial metabolisms emerge as solutions to the impacts of fossil-based economies, promising microbial carbon capture, oil spill digestion and plastic breakdown. Beyond remediation, microbial metabolism is also put to work in the production of commodities such as biofuels and textiles by engineered micro-organisms. These technoscientific interventions bring microbes into new ecological, economic and labour relations.
This workshop will explore how these relations are mediated and enacted, whether they modify or extend economic growth and accumulation, and the deployment of microbial metabolic labour as a fix for the consequences of anthropogenic interventions. We will explore how microbes are made productive through technoscientific practices that align microbial and economic scales such as co-cultivation, growth modeling, metagenomics analyses or industrial fermentations, and reflect on the role of microbes in the bioeconomy.
Themes for discussion in this workshop include (but are not limited to):
- Microbial fixes and remediations
- Microbes and economic growth (and de-growth)
- Promise and perils of microbial use and exploitation
- Optimizing microbial metabolisms and productivity
- Microbes, metabolism and the Anthropocene
- Microbial labour
Program
Presenters: Emilia Laine (University of Helsinki), Susanne Bauer (University of Oslo), George Cusworth (University of Oslo), Paco Barona (University of Leiden), Thomas Franssen (University of Leiden), Jose Cañada (University of Helsinki), Anna-Katharina Laboissière (University of Oslo), Ana Delgado (University of Oslo).
9:00-9:30: Welcome and concept presentation - Venue: Meeting room 1249 (12th floor)
9:30-10:00: Round of presentations
10:00-10:40. Emilia Laine (University of Helsinki) Decoupling from land or extending monoculturalization? Cellularagriculture as nested metabolisms.
10:40-11:20. George Cusworth (University of Oslo). Bounding metabolism: the indeterminacy, limits, and performativity of metabolic relations.
11:20– 11:40 Coffee break - Venue change to Meeting room 629 (6th floor)
11:40-12:20 Jose Cañada (University of Helsinki). Metabolic labour and aquatic microbes in the management of aquatic ecosystems.
12:20-13:00 Susanne Bauer (University of Oslo). Microbial labor for remediation of radioactive soils? Metabolic relations in anthropogenic ecologies.
13:00-13:30 Lunch break - Venue change to Meeting room 1040 (10th floor)
13:30-14:10 Anna-Katharina Laboissière (University of Oslo). Domesticating rot: the development of bacterial co-cultivation and anthropogenic bacterial biologies.
14:10-14:50 Ana Delgado (University of Oslo). Of microbes and planetary connections: remedies, replacements and metabolic scales.
14:50-15:00 Coffee break
15:00-16:15. Highlights points for discussion around the table. Possible collaborations and way ahead (discussing the possibility of a special issue)
Would you like to participate?
Please get in touch with Ana Delgado at a.m.d.aleman@tik.uio.no.