Professor Priscila Correia Fernandes: Space Biology in the Anthropocene: Toward a Multispecies Bioprotection

Dear all,

We are pleased to invite you to an ECONOVO seminar with visiting Professor Priscila Correia Fernandes. Professor Fernandes is a Full Professor of Bioengineering at the Bioengineering Laboratory, Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA), Brazil. She is currently at AU for a sabbatical research visit hosted by Jens-Christian Svenning from March 1 to December 31, 2026 Priscila Fernandes (0000-0003-3162-3078) - ORCID; ‪Priscila Correia Fernandes - ‪Google Acadêmico

Title:

Space Biology in the Anthropocene: Toward a Multispecies Bioprotection

Seminar Description:

This seminar presents ongoing research at the intersection of space biology, microbial ecology, and Science and Technology Studies (STS). We conceive that space biology is a radical laboratory of the Anthropocene, due to its reliance on technology, centered on human agency and expansion of human power over other-than-human beings. Working from a multispecies perspective, I examine how our recent findings about microbes, such as gene transfer and communication networks, the human microbiome, and plant rhizosphere, destabilize categorical species identities and human exceptionalism that currently dominate planetary protection and space settlement discourse. 

The research unfolds in three phases: (1) a critique and reconceptualization of planetary protection toward bioprotection, shifting monitoring from species presence to relational and gradient-based dynamics; (2) an dialogue of contemporary research in space agriculture, especially from the Space Farming Brazil Research Network with the research developed in nuveau biospheres; and (3) a speculative, participatory inquiry into alternative space habitation ontologies grounded in care, multispecies flourishing, and living and dying with dignity in the Anthropocene. The seminar will emphasize productive trouble, or staying with the problem of space exploration as a way to rethink ecological monitoring, ontological pluralism (including Indigenous and feminist literature), and what it means to build worlds amid collapse.

Host: 

Jens-Christian Svenning

All are welcome to join. The seminar will be in-person only.