Alicia Ng (she/they) is an interdisciplinary environmental-social scientist with an interest in how microbes take part in anthropogenically-affected ecologies. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher in the Academy of Finland CoE Multidisciplinary Centre of Excellence in Antimicrobial Resistance Research project (FIMAR).
Her doctoral research was on the world-making of microbes used in the nature-based technoscience known as bioremediation, a pollution alleviation method that requires the degradative capabilities of microbes, such as bacteria and (arbuscular mycorrhizal) fungi. Material and metaphorical worlds are made by more-than-humans, such as bioremediative microbes. Engaging with the fields of the social study of microbes, environmental humanities, environmental anthropology, and science and technology studies, the thesis builds on understandings of microbial agency. The worlds built by bioremediative microbes in this thesis also point to alternative approaches to waste and pollution, highlighting forms of living with. Alicia’s initial doctoral research was based on bioremediation science in China to clean up electronic waste (you can read one of the articles here), and her fieldwork was based in southern Lapland, Finland at bioremediation field sites and labs (book chapter and articles forthcoming). You can read her thesis here.
Alicia’s interest in microbes began from no-dig gardening and permaculture.
