Meike Wolf

Being a medical anthropologist, I explore how biomedical knowledge, technologies, and practices are employed to shape and modify bodies and environments, and to intervene in future scenarios. Specifically, I am interested in the mutual entrapments of human and microbial life (condensing in the concept of infection). Practices of hygiene and prevention are not only constitutive of the construction of subjectivities, social order, or modern rationality, but they also emerge through specific sociotechnical assemblages. My research focuses on the emergence of these sociotechnical assemblages, and their pathogens (especially influenza). Recently I started to think about the concept of failure – how is the failure of emergency infrastructures measured against their success? And what does failure look like? I am currently writing a book on how the cities of London and Frankfurt prepare for the next pandemic.