The Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies (MeST)

Current projects

PREPARE

Professor Klaus Høyer

PREPARE for the delivery of socially robust stem cell medicine. An interdisciplinary research team with expertise in medical sociology, science and technology studies, science communication, bioethics, clinical translation regulation, and health economics will work with reNEW researchers at our three partner institutions to consider issues affecting potential impact, development, and delivery of stem cell medicine to the market. We will capture patient voices and concerns so that stem cell researchers can direct their product development toward what matters to the people they are trying to help.

See: https://renew.science/research/prepare/

TechnEmotion (1/9 2022 – 31/8 2025)

Anja Marie Bornø Jensen (PI), Zainab Sheikh, Sofie á Rogvi, Lesley Sharp

TechnEmotion deals with the interaction between technology and emotion in organ transplantation by exploring ethnographically the ethical and existential implications of new transplant technologies, such as xenotransplantation, new death criteria for organ donors, stem cell research, and ex-vivo technologies (organs in machines). Focusing on emotional practices among patients, families, healthcare professionals, researchers and policy makers, we investigate how humans are affected by new technologies and, conversely, we focus on the role and power of emotions when new transplant technologies are developed and implemented in clinical practice.

Microbes on the Mind

Louise Whiteley, Adam Bencard

In the last decade, a new scientific research field has grown up around a startling insight: the trillions of bacteria that live in our gut seem to affect how the brain develops and functions. Whilst this scientific research is still at an early stage, results are already escaping the laboratory and catching the attention of journalists, doctors, and patients alike. This project therefore asks: what does microbiome research mean for our understanding of mental illness and its treatment? How is meaning created within and across the domains of science, media culture, and personal experience? The methods include open, experimental workshops in the Mind the Gut exhibition at Medical Museion, designed through collaboration with creative writers.

MeInWe (2017-2024)

Mette Nordahl Svendsen, Mie Seest Dam, Laura Emdal Navne, Iben Mundbjerg Gjødsbøl, Jeanette Bresson Ladegaard Knox, Clémence Pauline Cécile Pinel

Personalized Medicine in the Danish Welfare State (MeInWe) explores how strategies of tailoring diagnosis, treatment and prevention to individual genetic variability challenge existing ethical, organizational and regulatory frameworks in medicine. The project asks two central questions: How is “the personal” understood and established when genomic data are applied and exchanged in Danish health care? Which collectivities—e.g. species, ethnicity, nation, health care services, and ultimately the welfare state— are implied in constituting “the personal”? With these questions MeInWe critically assesses how strategies of personalized medicine draw boundaries around the person (the me), and how collectivities (the we) are shaped and negotiated in creating knowledge about the individual.

Department of Public Health
University of Copenhagen
Øster Farimagsgade 5
PO Box 2099
DK-1014 Copenhagen K
Denmark