Tracing the Fermentation Revival: How Microbial Logics Shape Alternatives in Health-Food-Sustainability Crises

Location: Rachel Carson Center, fourth floor, Conference Room, Leopoldstr. 11a, 80802 Munich, Germany

Maya Hey will be giving a talk on “Tracing the Fermentation Revival: How Microbial Logics Shape Alternatives Health-Food-Sustainability Crises.” This talk will examine the current fermentation revival (circa 2003) as a starting point for a series of shifts in how microbes are used, described, and imagined in society. It will follow the logics—and the contradictions—of mobilizing microbes as solutions to multiple crises in health, food, and agricultural systems. In particular, the talk will examine the rhetorical maneuvers used to rationalize emerging biotechnologies like precision fermentation, which promises more sustainable protein alternatives; however, these discussions tend to overlook the microbial consequences of such innovations. Following this trajectory across temporal, global, and cross-sectoral scales will provide clarification of changing attitudes towards human-microbe futures, as well as insights for political interventions while these crises unfold.

Drinks and snacks will be served following the talk.

To attend, please send an email to thinkfermentation@gmail.com.

Maya Hey is an expert on human-microbe relations in food settings. She holds degrees in dietetics, food studies, and communications and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for the Social Study of Microbes at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on fermentation as a hands-on practice to better understand microbes and work with them. Her current research consists of developing embodied and sensory methods to detect microbes; studying the intersection of ferments and health/sustainability rhetorics; and theorizing the gut as a mediator for human-microbe relationships. Her work has brought her to preschools, chemistry labs, commercial kitchens, organic farms, food banks, and retail markets, where she has gathered over 15 years of experience in facilitating discussions about contemporary food and health issues. She leads the organization fff|food feminism fermentation and is passionate about pedagogy.

The international research group “Off the Menu: Appetites, Culture, and Environment,” which is led by RCC alumna and former editorial director Dr. des. L. Sasha Gora, will host a workshop, titled “Sensoriography,” with guest researcher Maya Hey. This workshop, centered on multispecies ethnography, will accompany the lecture and take place in Augsburg the following day, 29 February 2024.