The Dilemma Game: Microbial Matters

With the support of a CSSM grant, we organized a workshop in 2023 dedicated to experimental methods for sensing and knowing microbes (Hey, Kolářová, Senft & Stöckelová, 2023). The three-day workshop brought together social scientists, humanities scholars, artists, microbiologists, and fermenters. While we greatly enjoyed the meeting, we also came away with a sense that we had not succeeded in creating shared research objects and expectations, and that microbes remained elusive to our methods and concepts.

To explore and reflect on experiences of interdisciplinary microbial research, we propose a card game based on the principles of the Dilemma Game. Developed at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the game invites participants to discuss controversial ethical and methodological issues through concrete scenarios drawn from academic life. Each card presents a specific situation and offers four possible responses. Players choose one option and argue for their preferred solution.

The Dilemma Game: Microbial Matters aims to stimulate debate around the dilemmas and frictions of interdisciplinary collaboration across the social and life sciences. The cards specifically address challenges arising in microbial research collaborations. Example dilemmas may include negotiating conflicting epistemic standards when ethnographic insights challenge laboratory protocols; deciding how to proceed when a microbial phenomenon meaningful to social researchers cannot be stabilized or reproduced in experimental settings; handling disagreements over authorship when contributions are difficult to translate across disciplines; or navigating the divergent temporalities of fieldwork and laboratory work.

Tereza Stöckelová

Joshua David Evans

Lukáš Senft

Graphic design: Vojtěch Liebl

This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund project “Beyond Security: The Role of Conflict in Resilience-Building” [reg. no.: CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004595].

The original Dilemma Game was developed by Erasmus University Rotterdam.