We would like to invite you to the next Teatime Talk as part of the series "Planetability" on Thursday, January 22nd 2026 at the HafenCity University.

Biomedical Metaphors, Multispecies Perspectives and the Potential of Planetability: Dialogues in Design and Urban Ecology.

Dr. Marisol Marini, University of São Paulo, Brazil  

Based on ethnographic research on human microbiota and biomedical innovation, in this teatime talk Marisol Marini reflects on the contemporary interest in multispecies studies. By questioning what can be considered social and who counts as an agent, Marisol provokes us to consider how other worldviews and epistemologies may provide critical insight into hegemonic world building practices. Central to this enquiry is the question: can multispecies perspectives seek epistemic justice to historically subjugated knowledge and to the very recognition of others, not only more-than-human, but also humans previously excluded from the "club of humanity”?

By retracing a trajectory from medical innovations to immunological imaginaries to ecological issues, the talk tracks the development of the concept of 'common body’ offering new ways of thinking about what counts as a social problem and to what extent metaphors and imaginaries can be weapons or tools for the construction of new worlds and a habitable planet. 

About the Lecturer:

Marisol Marini holds a degree in Social Sciences, a Master's degree, and a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of São Paulo (USP). During the PhD she completed a research internship at Maastricht University, Netherlands. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Unicamp, in the Department of Science and Technology Policy (DPCT - IG), and at McGill University, in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine, in Montreal. Currently, she is associate researcher at the School of Public Health (FSP - USP), where she coordinates the project "Common Body - A non-anthropocentric approach to the unavoidable convergences between Human and Planetary Health"


Planetability: Towards a Transdisciplinary Understanding of Planetary Health and Cohabitation

Planetability brings together German and Brazilian researchers across Urban Design, Engineering, Architecture, Urban Geography, Anthropology, Cultural Studies and Biology to advance a critical interdisciplinary understanding of Planetary Health. The project integrates recent debates on “multispecies urbanism” and the future design of healthy and equitable cities. It is funded by  DAAD-CAPES PROBRAL and co-led by Jamie-Scot Baxter (HCU), Laura Kemmer (USP), David Sperling (USP) and Tatiana Souza de Camargo (UFRGS).

Planetability combines three interlinked dimensions: planetary health, planetary thinking, and planetary transformation. Each dimension addresses a gap and enriches existing scholarship in the others. The field of planetary health, particularly prominent in Brazilian debates, emphasises the interconnection between human and environmental health under climate change. Whereas multispecies urbanism applies critical social theory under the umbrella of planetary thinking to urban contexts. For example, where traditional global health research has been criticised for reducing the environment to a determinant of human health, planetability opens the category of the environment to the multiple forms of life, elements and abiotic forces that constitute it. By drawing on critical feminist theory, this approach is attentive to the ways agency and, in turn, health are distributed the performed in human-nonhuman constellations. Together, these first two dimensions provide the grounding for the third: to examine planetary transformations through the lens of human and nonhuman health relations and the possibility of just and ethical forms of urban cohabitation.