Professor Silvia Posocco's Inaugural Lecture: Worlding Biodata
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Clore Management Centre
Worlding Biodata
What are biodata systems? How are biodata infrastructures shaping life formations? How are relations of biodata to contexts and communities to be understood over time and across sectoral divides? What are the processes that turn biomaterials and biospecimens into data points and what are the implications for those whose identities and sense of belonging are reconfigured in these socio- technical processes? How are notions of subjectivity, kinship and sociality increasingly biodigitally mediated and what relations do they reveal? What are biodata relationalities and how do they manifest transnationally? What ethical challenges does life in the biodata turn raise in the light of competing claims over emerging ontologies? What is anthropology’s contribution to an understanding of biodata worlds? How can a research ethos based on collaboration and plurilogue sustain a critical and situated analysis of biodata worlds and futures?
In this lecture, I address these questions drawing on individual and collaborative anthropological research on biodata infrastructures as set out in the co-authored book – with Prof. EJ Gonzalez-Polledo – Worlding Biodata: Rendering Life in Complex Systems (Bristol University Press, 2026).
Biography
I am a social anthropologist with interdisciplinary research interests in gender and sexuality studies and violence, conflict and genocide studies. I have studied ethnographically insurgent movements in Guatemala, the archives of transnational adoption across sites and temporalities, and most recently, forensic archives, bioinformation and cultures of evidence.
This inaugural lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in the Clore foyer.
Contact name: Chris Fray
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