Doctoral Dissertation Research: Dysbiosis, Health, and Therapeutics in Global Microbiome Science

In the 21st century, genomic methods of understanding microbes as ecosystems have generated the concept of the microbiome, a term that refers to the combined microorganisms and/or microbial genomes within a given environment. Often, that environment is the human body itself, and these new methods for studying human-associated microbes have resulted in new understandings of microbes’ importance to human health. This study examines how these shifts are changing ideas about how modern life affects human health. It investigates how the emerging field of microbiome science defines healthy and unhealthy human microbiomes, as well as underlying stakes and assumptions in these definitions. Aimed at more ethical and equitable interventions in health at both an individual and a global level, it will contribute empirical data on how microbiome initiatives can more equitably benefit groups that have been historically subjected to extractive research practices. Through publications and educational presentations, this research aims to change the ways that scientists and their clients in government, education, and industry use the microbiome to understand and intervene in the relationships between changing modern environments and human bodies. The study will employ ethnographic fieldwork focusing on global microbiome collection projects and the development of microbial therapeutics in the greater Boston/Cambridge area. In doing so, it asks: How is the development of microbial therapeutics changing contemporary understandings of health? How are human microbiomes designated healthy or unhealthy, and what is the role of therapeutic interventions in making these designations? Preliminary results suggest that high microbial biodiversity is coming to signify a new kind of human health, one associated with both a healthy environment and an idealized premodern relationship to it. The dissertation that emerges from this research will therefore examine the construction of modernity, environment, and the healthy body in microbiome science in order to theorize the effects of anthropogenic environmental change on approaches to human health and quality of life. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.