Research

Vibeke Pihl is a sociologist of science with a particular interest in the relations between agricultural production and the development of biotechnology. She received her PhD in 2014 from The Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her doctoral thesis, a science- and technology-inspired ethnography of pigs’ travels from agricultural pork production to contemporary translational biomedical science, illustrates a novel use of pigs to further knowledge and treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

The topic of her postdoctoral research project explored the emergence of a “green gold” bioeconomy in Denmark that centers on reducing our dependence on fossil fuels to ensure a sustainable future. This transformation involves a scientific turn to microorganisms such as cells and enzymes, which, through genetic engineering, become established as living cell factories for the production of various bio-based products, such as textile dyes, polymers, aromas, and pharmaceuticals.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork that includes accompanying scientists in and out of their labs as they seek to develop knowledge and harvesting of enzymes for biotechnological applications, the project focuses on the practices and conceptualisations involved in the shift to microorganisms. In addition, Pihl considers the continuity between past and present scientific infrastructures that enable enzymes to become sites for promissory futures and extractions of value. In tracing this development, Pihl asks how the interrelatedness of science on biotechnology and extraction of value come to shape our conceptions of sustainability in the present as well as of the futures that follow from the turn to microorganisms. 

Vibeke was a visiting Fulbright Fellow at UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics from August 2022 through July 2023.