K/V2: Experimental Biologies and Translational Research

Concept note for the second workshop

The second conference of the Knowledge / Value series was held on November 6–7, 2011, at the University of Chicago under the banner of “Experimental Biologies and Translational Research”. Some papers focused specifically on translational research, which has become an important (if still productively undefined) category within the life sciences, especially from the perspective of funding bodies and audit cultures. But such work must be located within an analysis of broader historical trajectory, and conceptual arc, of experimental biology. In the process, it was hoped that useful conceptualizations of both experiment and translation would emerge, specifically in terms of the articulations between knowledge and value, whose theorization remains the animating principle of these conversations.

Conference schedule

The public conference, split over both days of the workshop, consisted of two 120min panels, two 85min panels, and a keynote lecture.

• Panel 1: The promise(s) of post-genomics (16h00–18h00)

  • Mike Fortun: “Care, Creation, and the Impossible Sciences of Gene-X-Environment Interactions in Asthma: Promising Genomics V.2”.
    • Commentary by Judith Farquhar.
    Summary Farquhar
  • Emma Frow: “Negotiating Knowledge and Value in Synthetic Biology”.
    • Commentary by Michael Fisch.
    Summary Fisch
  • Christopher Kortright: “On Affinity, Labor and Creative Transformations: Plant/Researcher Relations in the C4 Rice Project”.

• Panel 2: Translational Science (Upstream?) (9h00–11h00)

  • Hannah Landecker: “Post Industrial Metabolism”.
    • Commentary by Gail Davies.
     Davies
  • Gail Davies: “What is a humanized mouse? Remaking the species and spaces of translational medicine”.
    • Commentary by Sabina Leonelli.
    • Interview transcript.
    Summary Leonelli .pdf
  • Rayna Rapp: “A Child Surrounds This Brain: The Future of Neurological Difference According to Scientists, Parents, and Diagnosed Young Adults”.
    • Commentary by Eugene Raikhel.
    • Interview transcript.
    Abstract Raikhel .pdf

• Panel 3: Institutional Imaginaries and Emergent Global Circuits (11h20–12h45)

  • Mike Fischer: “Biopolis: Asian Science in the Global Circuitry”.
    • Commentary by John Kelly.
    Abstract Kelly
  • Kaushik Sunder Rajan: “Translating Biocapital: The Nature (and Cultures) of Global Biomedical Collaborations”.
    • Commentary by George Marcus.
     Marcus

• Panel 4: Translational Medicine (Downstream?) (14h00–15h25)

  • Jennifer Karlin: “Trans/parency and Trans/lation: Re-Framing Techniques that Lubricate The Exchange of Financial Problems for Sociological Ones”.
    • Commentary by Joe Dumit.
    Summary Dumit
  • Michael Montoya: “Engaged Community Knowledge: Translational Science, Urban Renewal and Value / Knowledge Propositions”.
    • Commentary by Joe Dumit.
    Summary Dumit

• Keynote (15h30–17h00)

  • Hans-Jorg Rheinberger: “Heredity in the Twentieth Century: Experimental Features”.
    • Commentary by Sabina Leonelli.
     Leonelli

The conference was generously supported by: The Department of Anthropology; the Lichstern Fund; the Division of Social Sciences; the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory; the Franke Institute for the Humanities.