Chemicals are one way of understanding the substance of being. In turn, synthetic chemicals have become an integral part of life ways and lifeforms across spatial and temporal scales. Chemicals are life-giving and debilitating. However, what exactly is a chemical?

In the 2025 Technoscience Salon, we ask ourselves this question inspired by multi-disciplinary works in the field of science and technology studies. Chemicals have been rendered differentially in sensory studies, studies of historical ontology, and inquiries into environmental health and justice. These works offer expansions on what the chemical is and how it might be recognized, apprehended, and manipulated. We invite scholars, artists, community organizers, and activists to collectively re-consider the prevailing scientific descriptions and studies of chemicals that reduce them to functionalist molecules for the sake of biopolitical management. To this end, what other ways of conceptualizing, representing, and relating to “the chemical” might we take up as we strive towards less harmful futures?

Andrew Barry x What is a Chemical?

Tuesday, January 28th, 2025
4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Andrew Barry is an accomplished scholar who studied Natural Sciences and the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, completed his DPhil in Science and Technology Studies at the University of Sussex, held academic positions at various universities, including Oxford University and UCL, and has made significant contributions to the field of science and technology studies through his publications, fieldwork, and involvement in social and geographical theory initiatives.

Jayson Porter x What is a Chemical?

Tuesday, March 4th, 2025
4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Jayson Maurice Porter is an environmental writer and historian. He is Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the History Department and a Black and Indigenous Climate Faculty Fellow in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He specializes in black and Indigenous environmental histories, agricultural and food systems, agrochemicals (especially arsenic-based insecticides), cultural histories of ecology and botany, and environmental histories of revolution, resistance, and land reform.