Events will be hosted January – December in 2026, on the last Wednesday of every month, 11:00 – 13:00 pm ET. Presented over Zoom.
After each talk, we will continue the discussions in an informal social meeting with MSE. All speakers and members of the audience are welcome to join the social meeting.
Hosted by: Sue Ishaq, MSE, and finacially supported by the University of Maine Institute of Medicine, and the Applied Microbiology International via the 2025 Dororthy Jones Diversity and Inclusion Acheivement Award.
New this year: the live session will be available free, but the on-demand video-recording will only be available to MSE members for the first year (and available to the public afterwards).
Summary:
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic we, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health. Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. This speaker series explores the way that microbes connect public policy, social disparities, and human health, as well as the ongoing research, education, policy, and innovation in this field.
You can find recordings from previous series here.
“The nexus of food systems, ecosystems and human health: considering the more-than-humans who co-produce health”
Dr. Sarah Elton, PhD
Jun 24, 2026, 11:00 – 13:00 EDT.. The recording will be available online here after the event.
Dr. Sarah Elton is an Assistant Professor and Eakin Chair in Critical Qualitative Health Research Methodology at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She researches at the nexus of food systems, ecosystems and human health, considering the more-than-humans who co-produce health, including microbes. In 2021, she was the first qualitative researcher to be recognized by the Gairdner Foundation when she won a Gairdner Early Career Investigator Award. Previous to her academic career, Sarah worked as a journalist and is the author of two Canadian bestselling nonfiction books, Locavore and Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet. In this presentation, she draws on more-than-human methodologies and her own field work in food systems to explore different ways social scientists can conduct research with microbes. She focuses on how critical qualitative research methodologies can enable scholars to investigate the social and political forces that shape human-microbe relations.
The Ishaq Lab 