The first (and my favorite) empirical chapter of my thesis is based on a paper that was just published in Gastronomica’s special section: Making Microbes Explicit. In her editorial for the section, Lisa Haushofer describes the core of our intervention:
"The biodynamic wine producers in Nikolai Siimes, Nick Lewis, and Emma L. Sharp’s ‘Probiotic Approaches to Agricultural Microbiomes’ adopt ‘probiotic’ approaches to microbes... These wine growers work with, not against, microbial life, resisting the ‘eradicatory ethics of violence’ of conventional viniculture."
Our research found that biodynamic growers are experimental, maintain complex relationships with scientific knowledge, and are cultivating post-capitalist and post-Pasteurian approaches to farming. Most importantly, we argue that centering microbes invites a new understanding of terroir—one that goes beyond soil and land to account for the "messy, ambivalent entanglements" between human and microbial life.
As the editorial concludes, this special section represents "food studies par excellence", and it was a pleasure working with editors Maya Hey and Sarah Elton.
Read the full article in Gastronomica
And check out all of my published works here.