Dr. A. (Abigail) Nieves Delgado

Universitair hoofddocent
History and Philosophy of Science
a.nievesdelgado@uu.nl

In today's biosciences the use of racial classifications is still contested. While ‘race’ is usually denied a biological reality, it still figures in human diversity and health research. Recently, the concept of race has become central in the rapidly growing field of human microbiome research, where it is widely use to highlight health problems (e.g., obesity, type-2 diabetes) suffered by socio-economically disadvantaged groups. Here, ‘race’ is not primarily genetic but refers to different microbial compositions (e.g., in the gut) of human groups in certain environments. This is why, despite its health-related promises, microbiome research faces two crucial problems: it might again lead to discrimination against research populations (e.g., non-white groups from the Global South). In addition, while microbiome research endorses populations’ local specificity, it still applies allegedly globally applicable, US-centric racial classifications. Thus, it lacks a conceptual framework to study human diversity in local contexts. This project solves these conceptual problems through an integrated (i) historical, (ii) philosophical, and (iii) participatory approach in collaboration with and interdisciplinary and international network with collaborators based in Latin America, South Africa, Germany and the UK.

 

 

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