ABOUT

I am an inter/transdisciplinary researcher of the entanglements between microbes, embodiment and inequalities. To date, my research has focused on (1) socio-cultural aspects of the human microbiome and immunology; (2) feminist embodied methods to address health inequalities associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and chronic/recurrent infections; (3) advancing decolonial approaches to rethink health and illness and devise plural origins and actual shapes of Buen Vivir (good living). This includes an examination of how bioinequalities are being reproduced within science as it moves from and between the laboratory, the governmental, the popular, and the embodied. I use a wide variety of theoretical perspectives including sociology and anthropology of science, STS, body and critical race studies, queer theory and critical planetary health and qualitative research methods including multi-sited and digital ethnographies and historical and policy analysis.

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I am currently a Ramón y Cajal Senior Researcher (2024-2029) at the Department of Science, Technology and Society at the Institute of Philosophy of the Spanish National Research Council (IFS-CSIC).  

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I hold a bachelor's degree in Biology (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2008). I decided to pursue my interest in the socio-cultural studies of biology, completing with distinction a Master's in Cultural Studies (Goldsmiths, University of London, 2011). My interdisciplinary training has allowed me to explore a variety of social topics and empirical sites in contemporary biomedicine (with a focus on microbial ecology and immunology) in the Republic of Korea, Brazil, the UK, and the US. Funded by 'la Caixa' Foundation, my Ph.D. in Cultural Studies (Goldsmiths, 2019), entitled The microbiomisation of social categories of difference: an interdisciplinary critical science study of the human microbiome as the re-enactment of the immune self, examined how human microbiome science reinstates an immunology of inclusion and exclusion through the 'biologization' of social categories of difference (race, gender, and class in particular). My Ph.D. (no corrections) was the first sociocultural study of immunity, the microbiome, and inequalities. Using embodied experiences as a feminist sustainable approach to address recurrent infections and AMR has attracted wide attention across fields including invitations to present research at the MIT (2015) and The British Academy (2018), and publications (Núnez Casal 2019, 2021).

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I have been an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths (2014-2020) in the areas of cultural studies, gender and body studies, and Research Associate on the Wellcome Trust project 'Following the life of the Francis Crick Institute' at The University of Edinburgh, (2016-2017). In 2019, I was awarded the Wellcome Trust Fellowship ‘Shared Futures: Codeveloping Medical Humanities in China and the UK' by the University of Strathclyde. As a Research Associate in Genetics, Law and Society, The University of Oxford (2020), I have conducted research on the cultural implications of non-invasive pregnancy tests in Taiwan, South Africa and Denmark. I participated in the European Commission COST Action Bio-objects (2012-2015).

I was awarded an 'EcoSocieties Fund'(2020) (The Institute for Science and Society, The University of Nottingham) for ‘The Witch and the Microbe’. The project examined the genealogies and status of knowledges-practices of microbial healing and new articulations of care for "recalcitrant infections" (i.e. those recurrent or persistent with no clear biomedical explanation or treatment). The project was also part of my visiting fellowship at the Gender Studies Institute, Charles III University Madrid (December 2020-June 2021). I was a Research Fellow in the Department of Science, Technology and Society of the Institute of Philosophy at the Spanish National Research Council (IFS-CSIC) and at the Department of Philosophy and Anthropology of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) (January 2022-September 2024). My research project, entitled ¨GERMEN: Gender, Microbes and Buen Vivir¨, examined, from a critical science studies perspective, the entanglements between gender, biodiversity, and microbes as key to resurfacing the transgenerational knowledges-practices and embodied experiences of microbial healing developed by healers in specific local health cultures along with their subsequent imprint on contemporary microbiological research, popular and profane healing practices.

I am a Collaborating Professor at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), in the Interuniversity Master's Degree in Planetary Health (UOC-Pompeu i Fabra-ISGlobal), in the areas of social sciences and humanities, and at the Master´s Degree in Philosophy for Contemporary Challenges.

I am an elected Council member of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) (2022-2026).