Andrea

Núñez Casal

         I am an inter/transdisciplinary researcher of the entanglements between microbes, embodiment, and inequalities. To date, my research has focused on (1) social and cultural studies of the human microbiome and immunology; (2) feminist 'embodied' approaches and methods to address and remedy health inequalities associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and chronic/recurrent infections; and (3) plural origins of decolonial theories of ¨Buen Vivir¨ and alterity. These main research lines revolve around an examination of how bioinequalities are being reproduced within science as it moves from and between the laboratory, the governmental, the popular, and the embodied. I use a wide variety of theoretical perspectives including science and technology studies (STS), body and gender studies, cultural and medical anthropology, medical humanities and critical public health, and qualitative research methods including multi-sited and digital ethnographies, historical and policy analysis.
          I hold a bachelor’s in molecular biology and biotechnology (USC, 2008). I decided to pursue my interest in the socio-cultural studies of biology, completing with distinction a Master's in Cultural Studies (Goldsmiths, University of London, 2011). My interdisciplinary training has allowed me to explore a variety of social topics and empirical sites in contemporary biomedicine (microbial ecology and immunology) in the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, the UK, and the US. Funded by Obra Social 'la Caixa', my Ph.D. at the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths (2019), examined how human microbiome science reinstates an immunology of inclusion and exclusion through the 'biologisation' of social categories of difference (race, gender, and class in particular). My Ph.D. (no corrections) was the first sociocultural study of immunity, the microbiome, and inequalities. Using embodied experiences as a sustainable approach to address recurrent infections and AMR has pioneered my field attracting wide attention, including several invitations to present research at the MIT (2015) and The British Academy (2018), among other institutions, and to publish in Nature and EASST. 
          I have been an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths (2014-2020) in the areas of cultural studies, gender and body studies, and Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the project 'Following the life of the Francis Crick Institute', Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, The University of Edinburgh (2016-2017). My role included an ethnographic study about the ways in which the newly built Francis Crick Institute provided new opportunities for interdisciplinary knowledge creation as well as to organise a multi-disciplinary workshop to design the first longitudinal and reflexive study of a biomedical institute. In 2019, I was awarded the Wellcome Trust Fellowship ‘Shared Futures: Codeveloping Medical Humanities in China and the UK' by the University of Strathclyde. As a Research Associate in Genetics, Law and Society, The University of Oxford (2020-2021), I have conducted research on the cultural implications of non-invasive pregnancy tests (NIPTs) in Taiwan, South Africa and Denmark. I have participated in the European Commission COST Action Bio-objects (2012-2015), and I am a member of international research groups including ´Antimicrobials in Society´ (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and, most lately, the Centre for the Social Studies of Microbes (University of Helsinki). I was awarded an 'EcoSocieties Fund' (2020) (The University of Nottingham) for ‘The cultural histories of microbial healing´. The project examined the genealogies and status of feminised knowledges-practices of microbial healing (local, traditional, profane) as key to resurfacing and updating effective approaches and new articulations of care for "recalcitrant infections" (i.e. those recurrent or persistent with no clear biomedical explanation or treatment). The project was also part of my visiting fellowship at the Gender Studies Institute, Charles III University Madrid (December 2020- June 2021). 
          I was a Margarita Salas Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy and Anthropology of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) (2022-2024). During that time, my research examined, from a critical science studies perspective, the entanglements between gender, biodiversity, and microbes as key to resurface the transgenerational knowledges-practices and embodied experiences of microbial healing along with their subsequent imprint on contemporary microbiological research, popular and profane healing practices. 
I have recently obtained a Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellowship in the Social Sciences (2024-2029). I joined the Department of Science, Technology and Society (IFS-CSIC) in September 2024. Since 2021, I am a Collaborating Professor at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), in the Interuniversity Master's Degree in Planetary Health (UOC-Pompeu i Fabra-ISGlobal). I am an elected Council Member of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) (2023-2029). I have recently been appointed part of the Editorial Board of the journal Isegoría. 

          I am currently exploring the interplay and imbrications between the philosophical and embodied dimensions of immanence and transcendence and how the erotic - particularly through the work of George Bataille, Lou Andreas-Salomé,  Hélène Cixous, María Zambrano, Jean-Luc Nancy, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anne Dufourmantelle and Catherine Breillat - weaves in new forms of spirituality associated with what I call ¨more-than-biomedical healing¨, the term that englobes my Ramón y Cajal grant (2024-2029).