COMPOST Collective

Beyond The Genome

​​This project aims to identify and investigate ethical issues specifically in the context of large-scale proteomics research. The project is highly interdisciplinary with researchers from bioinformatics, precision medicine, proteomics, philosophy of science, and ethics backgrounds. We also pilot a 'bioethics-in-science' approach in which ethical research and proteomics research become highly integrated to create ethical investigations grounded in the actual practice of proteomics research, and proteomics research(ers) attuned to ethics.

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MicroTuning

New perspectives on the intertwining of microorganisms with cooling towers of nuclear power stations lungs and air. Art inquiry to create new ways of knowing by weaving science & bioethics into visual and sonic media.

MicroTuning is dedicated to intertwining microbiota in cooling towers and human lungs and proposes a shift of perspectives: Cooling towers of electric power stations provide an extraordinary ecosystem for interdependent microorganisms to flourish. Among these are the highly monitored and combated bacteria, Legionella p. that pose a serious health risk for humans. The microbial communities can ascend from the cooling tower water basin via evaporating steam, attach to the microbial world on the tower walls, detach, and join the (aero)microbiome in the air. They can then become part of the lung microbiome and cycle back into air, water, and towers. Can this unique biodiverse ecosystem be considered other than a threat to humans? Through fieldwork, laboratory and biophilosophical study, we develop new insights into these realities. The artistic inquiry then proposes new imaginaries of microbiomes and their hosts as interdependent and co-constitutive, using visual and sonic media. MicroTuning is a research creation, designed as a process. 

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Rooted in Relation

Reimagining Plant Ethics through Japanese Philosophy

A prominent strand of research in Critical Plant Studies (CPS) draws on findings in plant neurobiology, mobilizing plants' intelligence and consciousness as a basis for their moral consideration. However, this moral extensionist approach has considerable limitations, as it struggles with risks of anthropocentrism and hyperindividualism. Other authors in CPS advocate for a more relational approach, emphasizing the relation itself, rather than the individual properties of the relata. While a step in the right direction, these approaches would benefit from insights in Japanese philosophy. The non-dualist, relational ontological and ethical frameworks of Japanese philosophy allow us to conceptualize plant-human relations in new ways, and offer a more robust foundation for relational plant ethics. Through a critical comparative analysis of the different approaches to plant ethics in CPS, and a thorough exploration of Japanese environmental philosophy and traditions of thought, this research seeks to open up a dialogue between Japanese environmental thought and critical plant studies. The aim is to capture in what ways Japanese philosophy can offer an alternative to a moral extensionist approach, overcoming its limitations, and can enter into fruitful dialogue with the relational and care-based approaches to plant ethics in CPS.

Precision medicine from the margins

A standpoint-epistemological exploration of a new paradigm in medicine

High chronic illness rates and the increased prevalence of comorbidities put the current curative and evidence-based medical model under considerable pressure. In this context, precision medicine (PM) emerges as a novel data-driven approach to medical research and clinical practice. This new paradigm in medicine introduces distinct bio-ethical and (social) epistemological issues. In this proposal I present standpoint epistemology (SPE) as an innovative, potentially fruitful way to explore PM. SPE states that social position plays a role in establishing knowledge, which is therefore partial. SPE is also committed to the epistemic advantage thesis, which states that historically underrepresented perspectives have a distinct advantage in identifying knowledge gaps. In this project, I explore potentially fruitful applications of SPE in PM on three distinct levels, using both empirical (interviews) and theoretical methodologies. First, SPE offers a moral and epistemological incentive to include the perspectives of historically underrepresented groups in PM research (methodological level). Secondly, it motivates us to expand bioethical inquiry and attend to empirically informed bioethics in PM (bioethical level). And finally, based on the situated knowledge thesis, SPE can help us identify moral-epistemological issues in PM (moral-epistemological level). This project intends to further the bioethical debate on PM and PM practice by investigating the usefulness of an SPE approach.