The Skin Ecologies Network was launched with the generous support of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute in June 2023. Initiated by Janina Wellmann (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, RI ’18) and Lisa Haushofer (University of Amsterdam), Skin Ecologies interrogates skins as simultaneously natural and cultural ecosystems. It combines recent scientific insights into the skin microbiome with historical, anthropological, art historical, and artistic investigations. The network brings together a transdisciplinary range of scholars from the natural sciences, medicine, humanities, and the arts. Together, we study skins as ecological formations and propose new understandings of one of nature’s most perplexing organs. We work collaboratively as a team and independently in our specific fields with their respective disciplinary approaches in order to articulate and reflect commonalities and incommensurabilities and develop new research paths. In so doing, we challenge long-established conceptions of human life in an anthropocentric world.
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