Eurograd message

                Dear colleagues,

We are very happy to invite you to the 2nd and 3rd sessions of the
Ecobiosocial complexities: encounters, critiques, integrations international
seminar series.
The sessions will take place Wednesday, december 7 and Thursday, december 8,
from 12:00 to 13:30 in GEO-2215 and online here
https://epfl.zoom.us/j/66516277875

Wednesday, we will welcome Sverine
Louvel (Science Po
Grenoble) and Julien
Larregue (Universit de Laval) for a talk entitled:
( Un )healthy neighborhoods ? When social epigenetics meets the Chicago school
of sociology
(summary below)

Thursday, we will welcome Michelle Pentecost
 (King's College London) for
a talk entitled:
Preconception interventions for DOHaD : opportunities and challenges
 (summary below)

More information on the website of the STS Lab @UNIL:
https://www.unil.ch/stslab/home/menuinst/activities/evenements.html
We look forward to seeing you there !

Luca Chiapperino, Francesco Panese and Ccile Fasel
****

(Un)healthy neighborhoods? When social epigenetics meets the Chicago school of
sociology

Since the 2010s, social epigenetics -the study of the epigenetic mechanisms
through which social environments become biologically embodied- is often
heralded as a research area that grasps the biosocial entanglements between
material bodies and living conditions, and as a promising interdisciplinary
crossroad between the biological and the social sciences. Several social
scientists have argued that, so far, research in social epigenetics does not
live up to expectations: it deletes the complexity of social environments and
is practically not informed by social scientific approaches.

However, a nascent stream of research in social epigenetics -involving
researchers in social epidemiology and in sociology- resonates with the
Chicago school of sociology. It investigates neighborhood effects on health,
especially among racialized and disadvantaged social groups in the United
States. Does it open up interdisciplinary research avenues? Does it imply a
new critical discourse on social epigenetics? Drawing on interviews with
researchers and qualitative analyses of the published literature, this
presentation addresses the methodological and theoretical difficulties that
such endeavors inevitably face and their consequences on the working dynamics
of the interdisciplinary spaces that emerged in between social and biological
sciences.


Preconception interventions for DOHaD: opportunities and challenges

While the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) as a field has
been built on extensive physiological and epidemiological observational
studies, there is recognition that the DOHaD evidence base requires a shift to
human  intervention trials if it is to have any policy traction. As
intervention studies become more commonplace in the field of DOHaD, it is
also, essential to integrate a multidisciplinary perspective and integrate
social science approaches. Indeed, DOHaD is proving to be a productive and
creative ground for biosocial collaboration between scientists and social
scientists (including psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists and science
studies scholars), with recognition that integrating social science in
interventions ensures that there is ongoing attention to assumptions embedded
in frameworks; maintenance of complexity in the face of the temptation to
reach for the silver bullet; a retained sensitivity to socio-political and
historical context; and active brokerage of new experimental forms of
engagement with the communities of actors involved. Such contributions are
especially important given that DOHaD intervention studies will most
frequently use complex public health interventions, where traditional methods
are unable to capture the complexity of how context impacts intervention (and
vice versa) and where social science frameworks may prove more useful for
understanding non-linear relationships and explaining results. In this talk I
will introduce the case study of the Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative
(HeLTI), to illustrate the dynamics of a biosocial approach in action and
discuss the benefits of building research infrastructures in DOHaD such that
diverse disciplinary perspectives are given equal standing.


*****************************************************

Ccile Fasel

MD-PhD student
University of Lausanne
Faculty of Social and Political Sciences
Institute of Social Sciences 
STSLab
SNSF Ambizione Project: "Constructing the
Biosocial"

Quartier UNIL-Mouline
Btiment Gopolis, Bureau 5543
CH-1015 Lausanne - Switzerland
cecile.fasel@unil.ch

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