Spotlight on: fellowship to the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies - Building interdisciplinary foundations for health-environmental relations.

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A group of people standing in front of a building

Ciara Kierans, Professor in Social Anthropology and Director for the Centre for Health, Arts, Society and the Environment (CHASE) enjoyed the excellent support and warm collegiality of the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (Denmark) from the 1st of September, 2023 to the 1st of July, 2024. At AIAS, Ciara was a PIREAU fellow (Platform for Inequalities Research) working on a project focused on health-environment relations titled: Interlinking Filtrations: Rethinking disease aetiology, inequality and care in uncertain ecosystems.

Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies exterior shot

Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies 

From September 2023 until July 2024, I enjoyed a truly stimulating and productive fellowship at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark, funded via the Platform for Inequalities Research (PIREAU) at Aarhus University.

My project titled: Interlinking Filtrations: rethinking disease aetiology, inequality and care in uncertain ecosystems aimed to develop a new approach to study the interlinkages between environmental contamination and health inequalities. The project was based on my prior work on the rise of Chronic Kidney Disease of nontraditional origin (CKDnt) along the multiply contaminated Lerma-Chapala basin in Mexico.

Since the millennium, there has been an unprecedented increase in this new variant of Chronic Kidney Disease. The condition is not attributed to established causes, such as, diabetes or hypertension, but instead, associated with climate change (heat) and the effects of living in contaminated environments. Like other environmentally induced diseases, CKDnt challenges conventional modes of scientific reasoning and intervention.

In my work on CKDnt, I ask: what counts as proper knowledge when casual explanations are limited?; what counts as appropriate care when the care for human bodies, public health and lived environments is compromised. Around Chapala Lake, CKDnt has been linked to historic and systemic infrastructural failures e.g. the poor management of industrial and agricultural toxins, sewage, pesticide accumulations and contaminated public water supplies.

These concerns bring different kinds of filtering processes into relief, such as human kidneys, waste management and sanitation infrastructures, and ecological filters, e.g. wetland plants and grasses. My long-term plan is to draw these processes into relation, conceptually, methodologically and empirically.

The aim of my fellowship was to create interdisciplinary thinking around the affordances of filtration to produce: a) a paradigm shift in understanding environmentally induced diseases; b) consider sustainable interventions that take into consideration the disproportionate impacts of such diseases on impoverished communities.

I wanted to bring together a range of disciplines to explore interacting filtration processes that may include inter alia, kidneys, filter-feeding fish, plant-life, water treatment infrastructures, as well as sites of intervention, e.g. wetlands. By considering the affordances of filtration as an interdisciplinary concern, I take seriously alignments between multi-species bodies and their lived environments.

I wanted to know: i. how might filtration processes provide conceptual and practical tools for understanding the porous relationships between multi-species bodies and water bodies?; ii. how might such processes provide clues for intervention and for sustainable futures. The PIREAU-AIAS fellowship helped me to begin to address these 21st century questions from a truly interdisciplinary perspective.

Working at AIAS: Interdisciplinarity made possible!

AIAS supports curiosity-driven and independent research and does so in a number of ways: the institute has excellent working facilities, dining and conference facilities, an auditorium, meeting rooms, and a supportive, highly experienced directorship and administrative team. Fellows interact easily, supported by lunches on Mondays and Wednesdays and a Friday breakfast, weekly seminars and working groups. Introductions to the wider AU community is easily facilitated.

Writing retreats, groups away days, and social activities are encouraged and supported, generating a hive of intellectual, collaborative and social activity. AIAS is interdisciplinarity made both possible and easy! It didn’t take long to establish a vibrant interdisciplinary group to enhance my learning about filtrations, which comprised colleagues in eco-science, biology, heritage and archaeology, anthropology and environmental humanities. This enabled the following activities:

Activities

1. An interdisciplinary Conference

Remaking the Wetlands: the interdisciplinary ground of sustainability, with funding from the Carlsberg Foundation.

We brought together researchers working in different global settings to identify specific challenges in freshwater and coastal wetland restoration and management. We explored how humanities and social science scholars and eco-scientists can work together to craft sustainable and equitable approaches to wetland management.

A group of people standing outdoors in the countryside

From Remaking the Wetlands Conference, June 6 & 7th. Participants attending an outdoor seminar at Årslev Engsø, a reestablished lake and wetland area close to Aarhus city centre.

2. A nature recovery/creative methods workshop, 28th May: creative engagement with peatlands

With Prof Melanie Giles, Prof John Wedgwood Clarke and Dr Rose Ferraby, all colleagues from the UK.

This workshop was of interest to those working on nature-based recovery, peatlands, and/or creative methods for public engagement. It explored how creative approaches of visual art and poetry can help think through the complex ideas and practical challenges involved in nature recovery projects in peatland landscapes. There are many hidden or invisible histories and processes at play in peatlands: archaeological archives in the peat, hydrological processes, ecological systems and contemporary human narratives. We explored how creative approaches help communities prepare and imagine landscape change and alternative futures?

Collage by artist and archaeologist Rose Ferraby

Collage by artist and archaeologist Rose Ferraby

3. Microbial Futures Conference

21st, 22nd May (with Jens Seeberg, Eimear McLoughlin, and Gauri Sanjev

We explored the intricate web of connections between microscopic presences and humans and animals via biosocial theory and the ways biological and social phenomena intersect across species boundaries. The themes:  microbial life, antimicrobial resistance and micropollutants deepen our understanding of these dynamics. This conference generated interdisciplinary dialogue, embracing new perspectives on the complex relationships that shape our world.

4. Dialogues in Inequalities with Jes Bak Sørensen

A discussion forum drawing together epidemiological, social science, and humanities thinking to reframe approaches to social and health inequalities across Danish and UK welfare states.

Ciara Kierans presenting at end-of-year AIAS conference

Taken from the end-of-year AIAS conference, 10th June.

Continuing collaborations

A group of people standing in front of a building

Interdisciplinary collaborators participating in Aarhus University new interdisciplinary cross faculty platform (321-Go), 25th October, 2025

Collaborations continue, building institutional and international interdisciplinary opportunities. Examples include:

Comparative Environments: Working Across Land Water Interfaces

  • Based at Aarhus University and supported by AIAS, this is a new platform to facilitate cross departmental and cross-institutional collaboration. Our emphasis is on comparison, both an insight-generating academic act and practical contribution for wetland/landscape management (with Heather Swansen, David Harvey, Dorte Krause-Jensen, Joachim Audet, Carmen Leiva Dueñas, Carlos Alberto Arias)

Dialogues in Inequities

  • New collaboration with Public Health at Aarhus University and the Danish municipalities to generate comparative UK/Danish projects focusing on Social and Health Inequities.

FILTERSCAPES

  • New interdisciplinary project theme on health-environment relations, working with AU (see Comparative Environments) and UoL (Neil McDonald, David Atkinson, John Bridgeman, Beatrice Penati) colleagues.

A waterlogged landscape

The Filterscape: thinking across wet and dry land.

Three things I learned about Interdisciplinarity

  1. Requires strong ‘disciplinary’ roots.
  2. Requires fostering a non-competitive environment to grow organically
  3. Requires time and space

Looking forward to furthering the interdisciplinary conversation back at UoL. Thank you!

Ciara