Otherwhere Ethnography

Istvan Praet lectures anthropology at Durham University. Trained in social anthropology, he focuses on modern modes of knowledge, and on astrobiology more specifically. Astrobiology is the umbrella term for the endeavour to understand life at a cosmic level, and encompasses a wide spectrum of disciplines ranging from astronomy and microbiology to geochemistry and planetary science. His research is based on multi-sited ethnographic research conducted in Western Europe and the US since 2010. It concentrates on how scientists involved in contemporary space exploration make the alien familiar and vice versa, and it shows how they remake objectivity itself in the process. He previously worked at Oxford, where he obtained his doctorate in 2006, Paris (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale), Cambridge, and London (Roehampton).

Perig Pitrou is an anthropologist, and a CNRS senior researcher at the Maison Française d’Oxford. He coordinates the “Anthropology of Life” research team at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale (Collège de France, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres). His recent work is situated at the interface between biotechnology and society; it connects biopolitics, ecologies of life, and science and technology studies. In recent years, he has focused on developing novel ways to link the space sciences with the social sciences and the humanities. With Charlotte Bigg, he is a principal researcher on the PEPR Origins project, a major, ANR-funded collaboration with astrobiologists, planetary scientists, and astronomers. Previously, he has carried out a long-term ethnographical investigation in Mexico to study the conceptions of life and wellbeing and the relations with the natural environment in Amerindian communities.

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