STS Speaker. Translating the Cell Biology of Aging? On the Importance of Choreographing Knowledge

This talk draws on ethnographic study in a cell biology of ageing laboratory that explored how the articulation between basic and clinical research is being crafted. I first describe how knowledge-making in the cell biology of ageing relies on two distinct epistemic and material cultures: visualisation and quantification. I argue that the focus on ‘mechanisms’, ‘biomarkers’ or ‘clinical translation’ is related to how uncertainty is distributed across the two sets of skills, instruments, repertoires of valuation, and types of objectivity. I suggest that funders and policy makers’ emphasis on innovative applications restricts the movement – the careful choreography – between these two epistemic cultures. This has consequences for the field's ability not only to re-open questions about the relationship between ageing and senescence but also to re-imagine the innovation regime for ‘aging society’.

Tiago Moreira is Professor of Sociology at Durham University (UK). In the last 15 years or so, he has researched and published on the role of evidence in health care and on public controversies and activism on health care standards. More recently, his research has focused on contemporary sociotechnical articulations between ageing and health.