Adriana Fraser

Making Danger: biological weapons research, biosafety, and the management of microbial life, 1940-1990 delves into the history of design, environment, safety, and danger in the context of American, Canadian, and British biological weapons (BW) research between approximately 1940 and 1990. I draw on the STS concept of multispecies relations and the field of microbe studies, approaching BW history as a site of human-microbial relations much like fermentative food making. Rather than most existing literature, which follows BW at a policy or international relations level, Making Danger interrogates the quotidian practises of making weapons with microbes. In doing so, I explore how BW relates to associated sciences like food microbiology and biological safety. To reconstruct these practises, I engage with the materials of BW scientists, BW-adjacent scientists, anti-BW activists, and industry. CHSTM member institutions’ collections are a rich source of these materials and are therefore essential to my project.