Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Hannah Landecker

Science, Technology, & Human Values

@sthv.bsky.social

What timing! The "planetary health diet" has just been updated: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

October 8, 2025 at 1:28 AM

Hannah Landecker

@hannahlandecker.bsky.social

On shelter, accountability, and repair. And FEMA trailers. An account that only gets more timely, from my colleague Nick Shapiro, from Duke university Press. www.dukeupress.edu/homesick

Homesick

www.dukeupress.edu

October 13, 2025 at 8:39 PM

Reposted by Hannah Landecker

Emily Yates-Doerr

@eyatesd.bsky.social

In Seattle for @4sweb.bsky.social? Come celebrate our books with us at The Pine Box (1600 Melrose Ave).

Thursday, September 4th, 7 to 11 PM.

Find us in the Bruce Lee Beer Garden! 📖 🎉 🍰

#4S2025 #AnthroSky #STSSky @carceralecologies.bsky.social @vivvychoi.bsky.social

Handmade flier with pink, yellow, green and yellow-green figures (all with clearly non-AI fingers) reading the book covers (but the figures are also drawn as if their bodies are the book covers) of the 4 books featured at the party. The flier includes the text that is repeated in the post.

August 29, 2025 at 5:58 PM

Hannah Landecker

@hannahlandecker.bsky.social

Fascinating paper. PFAS acts as a surfactant disrupting reproduction….not coincidentally these chemicals are industrially/commercially useful exactly because of their surface active properties.

The Allard lab @allard-lab-ucla.bsky.social · Aug 25

🚨 New paper alert from our lab! Using model system and in vitro approaches, we demonstrate that PFAS, likely due to their physicochemical properties as surfactant, disrupt liquid-like condensates critical for reproduction. Link: academic.oup.com/toxsci/advan...

#PFAS #Toxicology #SystemsToxicology

A systems toxicology approach implicates post-transcriptional regulatory networks in reproductive defects from PFAS exposure

Abstract. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are highly persistent in the environment and widespread in consumer products, environmental media, and

academic.oup.com

August 26, 2025 at 4:21 AM

Reposted by Hannah Landecker

Luísa Reis Castro

@anthrobite.bsky.social

🦟 Can the Mosquito Bite? 🦟
The Multispecies Transmutation of Wolbachia Mosquitoes as Biotechnologies of Epidemic Control in Rio de Janeiro

How does the use of a bacterium in vector control reconfigure biopolitical relations?

New article at @estsjournal.bsky.social! #STSsky #AnthroSky

Print Screen:

Can the Mosquito Bite? The Multispecies Transmutation of Wolbachia Mosquitoes as Biotechnologies of Epidemic Control in Rio de Janeiro

ABSTRACT
A bite from the Aedes aegypti mosquito can transmit pathogenic viruses such as dengue, Zika, and chikungunya. While public health campaigns have historically focused on eliminating this vector species, a project in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, proposes to release A. aegypti carrying the intracellular bacterium Wolbachia. This microbe, passed from female A. aegypti to their progeny, would hinder viral transmission, making the bite less of a threat and promoting a more convivial coexistence. In releasing Wolbachia mosquitoes, project proponents presented their strategy as a solution for disease control that harnessed “nature,” instead of working against it. By juxtaposing historical accounts and ethnographic research in Rio with descriptions of biological processes, this article investigates how the microbe-mosquito dyad was turned into a biotechnology of epidemic control. Proponents of the Wolbachia project hoped that a change within multispecies relations—the novel human-bacterium-mosquito relationship—would change other multispecies relations—the historically constituted human-virus-mosquito relationships in Rio and beyond. This shift, which I term “multispecies transmutation,” highlights how relational alterations in both biologies and socialities created a new life-form (“Wolbachia mosquitoes”) and a new form of life (of multispecies coexistence). By tracing the more-than-human biopolitical arrangements put forward by the project, this article explores the recalibration of technoscientific solutions to global environmental health concerns. Multispecies transmutation offers a new framework for understanding the management of multispecies relations, showing how techniques of governance can target not individuals or populations per se, but rather interspecies connections.

August 6, 2025 at 1:17 PM

Hannah Landecker

@hannahlandecker.bsky.social

Call for Papers!

Gametic Politics: Eggs, Sperm, and Gender/Sex in the 21st Century

A Workshop for Early-Career Researchers organized by Rene Almeling and Sarah Richardson

April 16-17, 2026

Yale University

New Haven, CT

Details and application form here: www.renealmeling.com/gametic-poli...

Gametic Politics Workshop

Call for papers for social science and humanities scholars studying eggs, sperm, and gender/sex in the 21st century

www.renealmeling.com

August 6, 2025 at 9:14 PM

Reposted by Hannah Landecker

The Allard lab

@allard-lab-ucla.bsky.social

1/3 It's official, our grants from the NIH/NIEHS have all been suspended. We were aiming to understand how arsenic, a chemical that millions of Americans are exposed to at high levels, is disrupting the epigenetic machinery.

August 1, 2025 at 8:59 PM

Reposted by Hannah Landecker

Bharat Jayram Venkat

@bharatvenkat.bsky.social

My new article, "Twilight Shift," on how the global shipping industry drives thermal inequality, commodity fetishism under climate change, and the debilitating heat exposure experienced by warehouse workers and delivery drivers, out now in Limn!

doi.org/10.70312/JXNH

June 28, 2025 at 3:43 PM

Hannah Landecker

@hannahlandecker.bsky.social

“What is it that brought us to this situation where our only solution is to strip something of all of its context and stick it in a freezer and hope for the best?” asks Hannah Landecker, a sociologist and historian at UCLA. “There is no suspension of time." www.sciencenews.org/article/cryo...

Cryopreservation is not sci-fi. It may save plants from extinction

Not all plants can be stored in a seed bank. Cryopreservation offers an alternative, but critics question whether this form of conservation will work.

www.sciencenews.org

June 6, 2025 at 5:17 PM

Hannah Landecker

@hannahlandecker.bsky.social

Meaty!

Flurin Condrau @fcondrau.bsky.social · May 23

Announcing our "Historicizing Farm Animals" conference keynote lecture by @hannahlandecker.bsky.social 11 June 2025, 6.30pm local time - join us on Zoom or in person in Zurich. #histmed #onehealth

Poster for the keynote lecture by Hannah Landecker as part of our "Historicizing Farm Animals" conference in Zurich on 11 June 6.30pm, including QRL code for remote access.

May 23, 2025 at 9:54 PM

Reposted by Hannah Landecker

Sven Opitz

@svop.bsky.social

Our book „Ecologies of Disease Control“ is out! With contributions from @hannahlandecker.bsky.social, @engelmal.bsky.social, @ulibeisel.bsky.social, Ann Kelly, Clare Herrick, Susan Jones, Henning Füller and many more.
upittpress.org/books/978082...

Ecologies of Disease Control - University of Pittsburgh Press

|9780822948483|Spaces of Health Security in Historical Perspective|Ecologies of Disease Control explores the relationship between ecological conceptions of epidemics and forms of infectious disease co...

upittpress.org

May 23, 2025 at 10:22 AM

Reposted by Hannah Landecker

Nikolas Rose

@rose-nikolas.bsky.social

Heartfelt thanks to my dear colleagues in the BioSocieties editorial collective for this incredibly generous ´tribute’ as I step down from my editorial role after 20 years. I’ll continue to support this terrific journal from the sidelines. biosocieties.org/our-thanks-t...

Our Thanks to Founding Editor Professor Nikolas Rose

As BioSocieties reaches its twentieth year we write to mark a significant transition in our history. Professor Nikolas Rose, founding editor and global leader

biosocieties.org

April 22, 2025 at 8:19 AM

Reposted by Hannah Landecker

UW-Madison Medical History & Bioethics

@mhbuwmad.bsky.social

After decades of groundbreaking work at the intersection of science, medicine, environment, and visual culture, Gregg Mitman is retiring. A brilliant scholar, teacher, & storyteller—your impact stretches far beyond the classroom. #Thankyou, Gregg. 🌍🎥📚 #Retirement @uwmadison.bsky.social gmitman.com

April 8, 2025 at 1:21 PM

Reposted by Hannah Landecker

Maan Barua

@maanbarua.bsky.social

How do we engage with a world of material transformation hidden in plain sight? #MetabolicFutures at @akademiesolitude.bsky.social starts today!

With Hannah Landecker, Andrew Barry, Matthew Gandy,
@ulibeisel.bsky.social Víctor Muñoz Sanz and many others!

Full programme: bit.ly/4hLTmbB

April 4, 2025 at 11:09 AM

Hannah Landecker

@hannahlandecker.bsky.social

CFP celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Spiral Research Centre, University of Liège: "an invitation to reflect on the futures that STS scholars will encounter, engage with, and conceptualize in their own communities, countries and societies." www.spiral.uliege.be/cms/c_126967...

International conference: "Radiant Futures"

The Spiral Research Centre is celebrating its 30th anniversary, an occasion to pause and reflect on past, present and future; which is why Spiral is organizing the “Radiant Futures” conference in Lièg...

www.spiral.uliege.be

March 26, 2025 at 6:14 PM

Reposted by Hannah Landecker

Jessica Metcalf

@jessmetcalf.bsky.social

One led by Gugulethu Moyo (www.phc.ox.ac.uk/team/gugulet...): www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Getting ahead of human-associated microbial decline in Africa: the urgency of sampling in light of epidemiological transition

Evidence is growing that human-associated early-life microbial diversity modulates health over the long term, via effects in the infant termed ‘immune…

www.sciencedirect.com

March 1, 2025 at 2:59 PM

Reposted by Hannah Landecker

Sven Opitz

@svop.bsky.social

Our article on vector control methods that use microbes to fight viral diseases such as dengue is out now. @afolkers.bsky.social and I call the approach „symbiotic engineering“.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...