Jamie Lorimer on "Living Well with Worms"

Location: Rachel Carson Center, Leopoldstr. 11a, 4th Floor Conference Room

In a special seminar organized by the Environmental Studies Certificate Program, Jamie Lorimer will talk about "Living Well with Worms: The Geographies of Homo microbis." The event is open to everyone interested in attending.

Recent findings from the Human Microbiome Project suggest that a great deal of "us" is not, in fact, "us." Oft-cited figures suggest that our bodies are only 10 percent or 1 percent human, depending on whether our essential identity is pinned to "human" cells or genes, respectively. Scientists present the human as a "superorganism," accommodating, infected, and kept alive by diverse microbes in dynamic ecologies. Once feared as universally pathogenic, microbes are now ascribed central roles in the performance, maintenance and epigenesis of a healthy body. Lorimer will explore the implications of this figure of "Homo microbis" and engage with recent work that has sought to develop a relational or topological understanding of human and environmental health.

The talk focuses on an analysis of human entanglements with helminths, or parasitic worms. Deworming has long been central to programmes for global health and economic development. Helminths have largely been eradicated (along with a host of other microbes) in the Global North as part of broader initiatives to control infectious disease. However, there is growing concern that the absence of worms (and other components of the microbiome) might be behind the recent increases in the incidence of autoimmune, allergic and inflammatory disease. As a consequence, a number of people are reworming, using species like human hookworm therapeutically to tackle conditions such as hay fever, Crohn’s disease and even autism. Helminths are thus entangled with different groups of humans: as parasite, symbiont and domesticate.

About the speaker: Dr. Jamie Lorimer is Associate Professor at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. He is also a fellow and tutor at Hertford College as well as the Academic Director for Nature, Society & Environmental Governance (MSc).

There will be a pre-circulated paper for the workshop so please register with ursula.muenster@rcc.lmu.de or Maya.Schmitt@rcc.lmu.de.