Dos. Sariola Salla and working group

5000 €

Writeshop of ‘With Microbes’ book: Sustainable itineraries to Kilpisjärvi

Climate change will have destructive results on global, microscopic ecosystems. Extractive and unsustainable approaches to the environment are changing various ecologies of micro-organisms which again worsens global warming. Climate change also drives the spread of infections, thereby leading to excessive use of antibiotics and the spread of antimicrobial resistance. In short, global warming and micro-organisms influence each other cumulatively and cyclically. Microbial living-project explores human-microbial relationships. The project has put together a book proposal that aims to develop new conceptual language to understand these emerging relations. To do this, we will organise a writing retreat in Kilpisjärvi Biological Research Station in January 2020. The Station provides a perfect interdisciplinary platform for the work: it both serves as a site of active scientific research where e.g. microbes are being studied within Arctic ecologies and it engages in collaboration with the Finnish Bioart Society. The writeshop enables scholarly exchange between participants to develop the new concepts and ideas to understand human-microbe relations. It also explores microbes in participatory and embodied ways that aim to break away from the representational approached with which microbes are traditionally perceived. The funding will enable participants to travel to Kilpisjärvi by sustainable means, consistent with the aims of the Microbial Living-project.