From human to soil health, and back again?
Tiago Moreira, Durham University
Abstract
In the past decade my research has been concerned with a key question: How is health turned into a thing? How does health come to hold as a valuable, measurable, actionable thing? In this work, I have traced multiple trials in the creation of this specific socio-technical object from its manifestations in actuarial calculations to its mediations in contemporary data-driven, algorithmic health care systems. Recently, in the context of an interdisciplinary project on soil microbiome engineering, I have been trying to make sense of a new object, ‘soil health’, and how it might relate to human health. Like human health, soil health is variously defined, being measured and valued as environmental, economic and societal natural asset, including how it contributes directly and indirectly to human health (e.g. Brevik et al, 2020). In this paper, drawing on computational data and documentary analysis, I map the relations and tensions between human and soil health, and discuss the overlaps and interferences between the theories and methods used to study them within STS.
Biography
Tiago Moreira is Professor of Sociology at Durham University. He is the strategic lead of the Health and Social Theory Research Cluster in the Department of Sociology. His research has been funded by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence, Economic and Social Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, European Commission, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, Royal Society, NORDEA Fonden (DK), Scottish Funding Council, Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, and the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness. Lead on social science in the interdisciplinary collaboration Material Imagination project (2019-2022) with Dr. Margarita Staykova, which aimed to align innovation on ‘engineered living materials’ with the public values of inclusion, sustainability and care. He also designed and delivered Responsible Innovation training modules at the inter-university Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Soft Matter and Functional Surfaces Doctoral Training Centre. Moreira leads and manages the social science component of the interdisciplinary collaboration, Soil Microbiome Augmentation and Restoration Technologies Lab (2025-2030; Lead: Prof Karen Johnson).
Location
STS Seminar Room, NIG, St. II. 6th floor, Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna