About
Jamie’s research explores public understandings of nature and how these come to shape health and environmental governance. Past projects have explored the histories, politics and cultures of nature recovery, ranging across scales from elephants to the microbiome. He uses participatory and ethnographic methods to engage publics in research practices. His current work examines the probiotic turn that is underway in important parts of the Western world in which citizens and scientists are using life to manage life: reintroducing species and managing ecologies to deliver desired functions and services. This probiotic turn is a response to the blowback caused by the excessive application of antibiotic modes of managing life in the Anthropocene. It can be detected across spatial scales from the microbial to the planetary. In the context of the microbiome, it is evident in ongoing efforts to recalibrate modern hygiene practices and to conserve and restore valued microbiota.
Relevant Publications
- Lorimer, J. (2020). The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life: University of Minnesota Press.
- Lorimer, J. (2017). Parasites, ghosts and mutualists: a relational geography of microbes for global health. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42(4), 544-558. doi:10.1111/tran.12189 Lorimer, J.,
- Hodgetts, T., Grenyer, R., Greenhough, B., McLeod, C., & Dwyer, A. (2019). Making the microbiome public: Participatory experiments with DNA sequencing in domestic kitchens. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 44(3), 524-541. doi:10.1111/tran.12289
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CIFAR is a registered charitable organization supported by the governments of Canada and Quebec, as well as foundations, individuals, corporations and Canadian and international partner organizations.