Charlotte’s research focuses on the relationship between humans and microbes in the biological and biomedical sciences. After a thesis on the relationship between biologists and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae in a genetics and cell biology laboratory, she worked for 3 years on HIV clinical trials conducted in Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso, and then on how VMMC was constructed as a tool to prevent HIV transmission.

Charlotte started exploring issues around the human microbiota 5 years ago, and in doing so was fortunate enough to get to know bacteriophage viruses (literally: bacteria-eating viruses). For the past 4 years, she has been happily exploring, alongside committed researchers and physicians, the potentialities of these phages, especially their bactericidal potential which makes them allies of choice in the fight against AMR. However, it is important not to reduce them to mere ‘bacterial killers’. The relationships between phages, bacteria and their environments are complex and varied and cannot be reified. It is this spectrum of relationships, and how some humans wish to use it, that is at the heart of her work. Charlotte’s ethnographic fieldwork takes place mainly in France, Switzerland and Belgium.

Find out more about Charlotte here

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