Acknowledgements

This book was made possible by a generous grant from the Institut Universitaire de France, and by conversations with a constellation of remarkable researchers. In 2019, my colleague Pierre-Louis Patoine and I launched a collective project on the ‘New Biological Perspectives’ of twenty-first-century literature and performance. Our collaboration continued throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and my work has benefited greatly from ongoing conversations with Frédérique Aït-Touati, Eliane Beaufils, Ben de Bruyn, Josie Gill, Rishi Goyal, Sophie Musitelli, Dan Rebellato, Kirsten E. Shepherd, and Susan M. Squier. I have also learned a great deal from the participants in the Sorbonne Nouvelle University Science and Literature seminar and the BioCriticism webinar, including Vicky Angelaki, Patrick Armstrong, Thierry Bardini, Noëlle Batt, Marie-Pierre Boucher, Lara Choksey, Bruce Clarke, Jerome De Groot, Martin Grünfeld, Paul Hamann-Rose, Jonathan Hope, Fleur Hopkins-Loféron, Teun Joshua Brandt, Lisa Keränen, Shannon Lambert, Hugues Marchal, Simone Cecilie Pedersen, Marko Rohlfs, Jonathan Skinner, Rūta Šlapkauskaitė, Anna Street, and Anna Watkins Fischer. I am particularly grateful to the biologists who have contributed time, thought, and images to my literary questions: Eric Bapteste, François-Joseph Lapointe, Catherine Larose, and Nicolai Siegel.

I presented facets of this work in various conferences organised by the British Society for Literature and Science and the European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, two societies which promote multidisciplinary research and an ethos of open-minded and constructive collaboration which I highly value. For their invitations and feedback on my research, I thank Halldor Stefansson at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Marco Caracciolo at the ‘Narrating the Mesh’ laboratory in Ghent, the ‘Revolutions Induced by Microbiomes’ Network at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Centre for Scientific Research) in Paris, the PRISMES laboratory at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University, and the Groupe de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur la Crise Ecologique (Interdisciplinary Ecological Crisis Research Group) in Louvain.

Because we all have so little time, I cannot express enough gratitude to those who took time to read, encourage, and improve my writing: thank you to my editor Peter Boxall, to the Cambridge University Press reviewers, and to my readers and listeners Pieter Vermeulen, Pierre-Louis Patoine, Sarah Bouttier, Catherine Bernard, Derek Woods, Alexandra Poulain, Mathilde Régent, Lucy Mitchell, and Bernhard Windisch.