This multidisciplinary project brings together early childhood educational sciences, host–microbiome research, ecology, environmental humanities and art. It responds to the rising incidence of non‑communicable diseases linked to reduced microbial diversity in children’s microbiota—such as asthma, immune dysregulation, allergies, obesity, and Type 1 diabetes.
Early childhood is a crucial period for shaping a healthy microbiota through rich environmental exposure, balanced use of antibiotics and disinfectants, and supportive dietary practices. The concept of the ‘microbial child’ integrates these insights, viewing children as biosocial beings.
The ‘microbial child’ (Millei et al, 2025) is composed of human cells and symbiotic partners, microbes. The ‘microbial child’ is a part of sympoietic systems (Margulis, 1998; Haraway, 2016), open and collaborative ecological systems with social and cultural layers. The concept of the ‘microbial child’ seeks to overcome binaries between nature and culture, biology and society, and child and environment, and opens new possibilities for educational and caring practices. Understanding these complex connections encourages new ways of acting responsibly toward both our microbial partners and ecosystems, and transform how we approach ethics, care, and decision‑making.
At the same time, our technoscientific era is reshaping the elemental matter of the planet. Environmental change now unfolds through ongoing reconfigurations driven by colonial histories, industrial production and waste, and extractive practices. The Earth’s biosphere is a massive, sympoietic system where microorganisms, environment, and atmosphere ‘make-together’ complex, self-regulating systems. From the 20th century, waste, chemicals and biological control of industries interfered with living matter and process from molecular to ecological systems. The resulting altered conditions of life are creating new patterning of biological worlds.
Drawing on Murphy’s concept of 'alterlife', we rethink the daycare as a material, multispecies space shaped by chemicals, not as an exception, but as part of children’s bodies and ordinary daycare ecologies unfolding as slow violence. We take seriously children’s biological life, governance and biopolitical practices that cultivate and regulate their ‘local biologies’ (Lock, 1993). A biosocial approach highlights how children’s bodies remain open to alteration and how daycare routines, infrastructures, and industrial systems territorialize their biological lives, especially at the subtle molecular level.
By developing microbial education with attention to the alterlife of children’s ordinary ecologies, the project acknowledges both harm and possibility. Rather than seeking a return to an uncontaminated past, it asks how life, learning, and care might proceed within our chemically altered world, and how education and care can ensure a ‘good enough’ metabolic and social future for children.
The project is part of a broader interdisciplinary research group Microbial childhood collaboratory which seeks to combine biological and social perspectives in a biosocial imagination to navigate contemporary challenges and opportunities in contemporary childhoods in the wider Nordic society and beyond.
References
Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Lock, M. (1993). Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Margulis, L. (1998). Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution. Basic Books.
Millei, Z., Spyrou, S., Rosslund, M., Breinholt, A., Tammi, T., Conklin, B., Lee, N., Alminde, S. and Warming, H. (2025) Child ecologies in a microbial world: A new imperative for childhood studies. Journal of Childhood Studies, 50(1)34-52 https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/jcs/article/view/21918
Murphy, M. (2017). Alterlife and Decolonial Chemical Relations. Cultural Anthropology, 32(4), 494–503. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca32.4.02
Funding source
Microbial Childhood: Restor(y)ing Daycare Ecologies II. Kone Foundation Aug. 2026- July 2030 – EUR 339 900
‘Vänliga mikrober: Hälsofrämjande förskola praktik för små barn och planeten’ (Friendly Microbes: Health-Promoting Preschool Practice for Young Children and the Planet) Stiftelsen Brita Maria Renlunds minne – Aug 2025-July 2026 - EUR 60.000
CONNECT Visiting Fellowship (2024 October): University of Sunshine Coast, Australia - UniSC Internal Scheme Visiting Fellowship ((980029272), supported by Dr Stefanie Fishel, 26,923 AUD
Microbial Childhood: Restor(y)ing Daycare Ecologies. Nessling Foundation (202400154 - Aug 2024– Aug. 2025 – EUR 100.000)
Microbial Childhood Collaboratory (MCC): Enlivening Critical Childhood Studies (345269 NOS-HS Exploratory workshop (Academy of Finland / Nordforsk 2022-2023 – EUR 42.000)
