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We cordially invite you to the presentation of our colleague Dr. Ernesto Schwartz-Marin titled "Antiracist Genomics (ANTIGEN): from ethnographic insights to speculative design" in S5 (GW II) on February 07th at 6 p.m.

Abstract: In 2003 the Human Genome Project claimed that race has no biological basis, since humanity shares 99.9% of its DNA. This led the acclaimed geneticist Francis Crick to state: “Under the skin, we are all family”. Nevertheless, two decades of social research indicates that genomics has in fact ‘naturalised’ & reinforced racial categories.

In this talk I will approach the issue of Antiracist Genomics (ANTIGEN) from ethnographic insights, to then into speculative spaces that inform a research project that I am currently designing, which seeks to counter both facile universalism (we are all genetically one) and biological nativism to create a new model for antiracist genomics. The central premise of ANTIGEN is that we must address and account for the colonial legacies & systematic injustices that have shaped contemporary populations, to achieve the antiracist potential of genomics.

ANTIGEN seeks to push forward decolonial Science & Technology Studies on race and genomics by engaging with Latin American contexts in which notions of racial mixture —and complex histories of colonial & recent violence— shed new light on notions of (i) reparation (ii) strategic essentialism and (iii) justice that so far have mostly responded to settler colonial contexts in the Global North.

In this talk I will expand on my budding ideas on Antiracist Genomics, exploring how I think we could create a new bioinformatic system for Genetic Ancestry Testing that subverts traditional population categories in favour of a multi-layered conception of ancestry. I will also explore some possible forms of genomic governance that can help us tackle structural racism, by enriching simplistic antiracist ideas that dominate scientific and ethical discourses in this field.