Microbial Childhood Collaboratory

Our multidisciplinary research and art weaves together multiple ways of knowing, sensing and feeling in childhood studies and early childhood education with the concept of the ‘microbial child’. It seeks to re-activate biological life in 'children's lives', which is more urgent than ever due to the changes wrought in the Anthropocene that lead to large-scale extinction of life.

Developed in our Microbial Childhood Collaboratory (since 2021), the figure of the ‘microbial child’ recognizes that the body is composed of human cells and a myriad of microbes in dynamic symbiotic communities (McFall-Ngai, 2017). This figure poses challenges to individualist, human centric and exceptionalist ontology by considering the body as a multiplicity in symbiotic relations (Dupré, 2012). The figure connects micro- and macro-ecologies, in which biodiversity is considered spanning from the gut microbiome to trees and the forest to Earth ecosystems. Microbes can also offer metaphors and models to sense and think with, and to redevelop biosocial imagination and social life. Microbial communities can serve as figurative strategies to rethink current social and political concerns (Fishel, 2017). In re-biologizing models of early human development, the concept of the ‘microbial child’ casts new light on ideas and practices that have oriented childcare for generations of Indigenous communities.

In our collaboratory we bring together, counterpose, and experiment with multiple ways of knowing - from the lab to Indigenous stories - with microbes. Our experimentations stretch from babyhood to daycare, Indigenous knowledges to forests and urban environments motivated to re-activate the biological in research, practice and policy regarding children's lives in a rapidly changing, plural and impure world.

Microbial Childhood Restor(y)in Daycare Ecologies project

This project utilizes the attention on microbes that emerged during the design of a new microbial daycare in Tampere, which is next to a forest and will include a biodiverse garden. The microbial daycare is a response to our collaborators’ research (see here, here and here) demonstrating that children’s weak interaction with environmental microbes in urban environments is linked to an imbalance in immune regulation. The pedagogical stories and artworks created through science and art engagements communicate to children and their families, educators and the public that human life and health are connected to thriving biodiverse environments hence fostering those is a key to human wellbeing. Pedagogical encounters seek to promote ethical relations with and foster microbial diversity, an area still unrecognized in conservation yet plays a crucial role in changes to ecosystems.