PEG 1.G107, Campus Westend, 4.15 pm

The project team (Prof. Dr. Thomas Lemke, Dr. Veit Braun, Dr. Sara Lafuente) will present some ideas and central theses from a ERC research project that started on 1st April 2019. The project proposes to investigate the collection, storage and usage of human and non-human organic material by technologies of cooling and freezing, what are known as cryotechnologies. It is based on three case studies. The first deals with cord blood banking with the promise to store vitality and ensure health; the second addresses oocyte freezing to extend fertility and rearrange reproductive futures, while in the third example the reproduction of whole species is at stake. Here we engage with the emergence of frozen zoos, that is to say cryobanks which seek to preserve organic material of endangered or extinct animal species.