Seeing Like a Virus

This historic 1963 photograph depicted laboratorian, Gail Wathen, as she was performing an examination of an agar culture Petri dish, which had been inoculated with Salmonella typhi bacteria, and typed using bacteriophage typing methods.

CDC laboratorian, Gail Wathen, examines of an agar culture Petri dish, which has been inoculated with Salmonella typhi bacteria, and typed using bacteriophages, 1963 (CDC).

“Seeing like a Virus” explores the history and legacies of a key surveillance technology for bacterial pathogens: bacteriophage-typing.

Phage-typing employs carefully curated sets of bacteria-infecting viruses (bacteriophages) to identify bacteria. The technology originated in 1920s Germany and became a gold standard for surveying important pathogens throughout the Cold War. However, biological limitations, extractive sampling, and hierarchical laboratory networks also facilitated a neglect of diseases in the Global South and a distortion of international health politics towards Northern interests.

Focusing on phage-typing: (1) I explore how laboratory-based typing technologies structured knowledge of infectious disease and reinforced global power imbalances; (2) I collaborate with microbiologists to study the biological past of typing collections; (3) I explore microbial collections' current recycling by the biotech industry and (post)colonial legacies of phenotypic surveillance in the genomic era.

This project is funded by a Wellcome Trust University Award.

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