Egenis Research

The Egenis membership is engaged in developing and running a wide range of highly innovative, interdisciplinary research projects in cooperation with a range of external partners. This research is characterised by its variety of output modes, impact, and policy shaping potential. The core research trajectories of Egenis are grouped into the following main strands:

• Biology and Environment, led by Dr Adrian Currie and Dr Angela Cassidy
• Health and Biomedical Research, led by Dr Ginny Russell, Dr Hannah Farrimond and Dr Sam Wilkinson
• Mind, Body and Culture, led by Prof. Giovanna Colombetti
• Data, Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence, led by Dr Stephan Guttinger and Prof Sabina Leonelli

Egenis as an institute is recognised internationally for its interdisciplinary research into the nature, history, and socio-political as well as epistemic implications of the modern biosciences—including the cognitive, biomedical, and agricultural sciences. The strength of the Centre lies specifically in combining conceptual analysis with the study of contemporary scientific and medical practice. It has pioneered new approaches to the understanding of genomics, stem cell science, symbiosis, model organisms, data-intensive research, systems biology and synthetic biology, the Tree of Life, heredity and microbiology. Books and papers written by Egenis members are commonly and widely cited as seminal and world-leading scholarship. 

Areas of particular strength in ongoing research within its core strands include:

• Affectivity, intersubjectivity, and material culture
• Biodiversity management and systematics
• Biological ontology: genes, organisms, and species
• Data science, open data and implications for policy and business
• Diagnostic practices, genetic testing and biomarkers
• Embodied and situated cognition
• Epigenomics, genome-editing and health-environment interactions
• Evolutionary theory
• Experimentation on non-humans
• Health informatics and genomics, personalised medicine
• Microbiology and host-pathogen interactions
• Scientific methods, policies, and regulation, in globalised, interdisciplinary research