Nataliya Tchermalykh, a fourth year PhD candidate, received a Doc.Mobility research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (2017-2018). In her project, titled "Making Art, Breaking Law: Exploring the Creative Forms of Public Dissent and Cause Lawyering in Post-Soviet Russia", she examines recent transformations in the Russian legal and public spheres associated with the intensifying judicialization of political dissent. After having carried out long-term ethnographical fieldwork in Saint-Petersburg and Moscow, she will spend the next two semesters at MediaLab, Sciences Po Paris, where she will work with Bruno Latour and Vincent Lepinay.

Rosie Sims, a third year PhD candidate received a Doc.CH grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (2017-2019). Her project "Towards a Brave New World: Understanding New Configurations of Virus, Vector, and Human Relations in Colombia" focuses on a global health intervention that is being rolled out in the city of Medellín, Colombia, which involves the release of bio-engineered mosquitos as a form of biocontrol against diseases such as Zika, dengue, and chikungunya. Through an ethnography of science-in-the-making, this research intends to understand how new technologies of vector control depart from existing rationales of eradication and embody the radically different idea of "living with" mosquitos.