Dr Andrea Núñez Casal is a sociologist of biomedicine and the body. To date, her research has
focused on (1) the social and cultural aspects of human microbiome and immunology – and (2)
advancing embodied interspecies approaches and methods to address and remedy health inequalities.
Andrea holds a BSc in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from Universidade de Santiago de
Compostela. She has used this background to explore a range of empirical sites in contemporary
biomedicine, including immunology, microbial ecology and genomics in Spain, South Korea, the UK
and the US. Funded by ‘la Caixa’ Foundation, she received her PhD in Cultural Studies from
Goldsmiths, University of London in 2019. Her doctoral dissertation, The Microbiomisation of Social
Categories of Difference, examines how human microbiome science reinstates an immuno-logic of
inclusion and exclusion through the biologisation of social categories of difference (race, gender, and
class in particular).
Núñez Casal has been an Associate Lecturer at the Media, and Cultural Studies Department at
Goldsmiths, University of London and a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Science,
Technology, and Innovation Studies at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of
Edinburgh. She is part of several research networks and initiatives including Antimicrobials in
Society (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK), Red esCTS (Spanish National
Research Council) and Centre for Feminist Research (Goldsmiths).
In addition to her role with the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Andrea works on her postdoctoral
study, The Witch and the Microbe: Traditional Food Cultures, Health, and Microbial Sciences
(EcoSocieties Research Fund, the University of Nottingham). Further information on her research is
available at Microbiologies Multiples.