WCCEH/Egenis Annual Public Lecture: Metabolism is Not a Metaphor

Epidemics of metabolic diseases are a major global challenge. Understanding how colonial histories, economic inequalities and post-industrial ways of living intersect to produce ill-health is a truly interdisciplinary task. To make progress on how to sustain health in the face of metabolic injustice, we need to bring together expertise from across the medical humanities, social sciences and biomedicine. Research at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures & Environments of Health and beyond has begun to map out the work needed to integrate diverse kinds of knowledge - from lived experience, epidemiology, history, anthropology, law and many other disciplines – to work towards metabolic justice. We are thrilled that this year’s WCCEH Annual Lecture, hosted in collaboration with Egenis, will be given by Professor Hannah Landecker (UCLA), author of "Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies" (2007, Harvard UP). Her work has been foundational to this emerging field, and inspirational for transdisciplinary thinking.

Professer Landecker is an historian and sociologist of the life sciences. She holds a joint appointment in the Life and Social Sciences at UCLA, where she is a Professor in the Sociology Department, and the Institute for Society and Genetics, an interdisciplinary unit at UCLA committed to cultivating research and pedagogy at the interface of the life and human sciences. She co-directs the Center for Reproductive Science, Health and Education at UCLA. Recent work has focused on the social and biological problem of antimicrobial resistance, histories of metabolism and metabolic disorder, and the turn to proteins in biotechnology.

The Lecture will take place in LT2, Queen’s Building, and will be live streamed and captioned.
All are very welcome!

Please also join us for a brief reception beforehand, at 5.15pm in the Wellcome Centre, Queen’s Building, Streatham Campus.

More information and register