The Precision Paradigm in Healthcare and Agriculture
Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences at University of Copenhagen
This is a generic course. This means that the course is reserved for PhD students at the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences at UCPH.
Anyone can apply for the course, but if you are not a PhD student at the Graduate School, you will be placed on the waiting list until the enrollment deadline. After the enrollment deadline, available seats will be allocated to the waiting list.
The course is free of charge for PhD students at Danish universities (except Copenhagen Business School), and for PhD students at NorDoc member faculties. All other participants must pay the course fee.
Learning objectives
A student who has met the objectives of the course will be able to:
1. describe the rationales and practices of precision in empirical settings
2. critically analyze the political, social, and ethical dimensions of precision
3. theorize precision as a governing paradigm across healthcare and agriculture
Content
In contemporary societies, precision functions as a technopolitical ideal and normative horizon promising to replace the messy, inefficient, and inadequate with the accurate, optimized, and governable. In medicine, the concept of ‘precision medicine’—also known as ‘personalized medicine’—denotes a set of practices to tailor diagnostics, therapeutics, and prevention to the individual characteristics of the person. In agriculture, precision farming is a new mode of intervention targeting each plant or field individually to increase agricultural efficiency. Yet, while precision carries inherently progressive connotations in policy discourse, questions remain regarding how its techniques generate profound moral ambiguities and introduce new vectors of human and animal vulnerability, and how its reliance on certain capital flows might interact with or inadvertently compound structural inequalities. Whole landscapes and healthcare infrastructures may be quietly transformed in the name of accuracy. In healthcare, the precision paradigm encompasses technological innovations such as genomic analysis, AI-driven risk prediction tools, organoids, and Advanced Therapeutic Medicinal Products (ATMPs). In agriculture, precision technologies cover gene-editing and gene-modification (e.g. CRISPR) to make plants genetically fit for and resilient to specific environments, along with technologies to increase agricultural efficiency with AI-driven monitoring systems and soil sensors.
This PhD course will explore the meanings, practices, and politics of precision across healthcare and agriculture: what specific meanings of precision do different technologies bring about, and what values do they draw upon and mobilize? How is precision practiced in time and space, and what spatio-temporalities do technologies of precision enact? What national resources and infrastructures are being deployed in the name of precision, and who benefits? What specific regimes of anticipation and predictive control are ushered in by the ideal of precision? What are the solidarity challenges and possibilities that precision technologies generate?
Participants
PhD fellows who empirically research technologies, politics and practices in healthcare and/or agriculture.
Relevance to graduate programmes
The course is relevant to PhD students from the following graduate programmes at the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences, UCPH:
All graduate programmes
Language
English
Form
The course will contain lectures on key topics followed by group work, discussions and exercises. One week before the course, each participant will hand in a short paper on their work in relation to the course literature
Course directors
Professor Mette N. Svendsen: mesv@sund.ku.dk
Associate Professor Mie Seest Dam: mda@sund.ku.dk
Associate Professor Iben Mundbjerg Gjødsbøl: ibgj@sund.ku.dk
Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen
Teachers
Mette N. Svendsen: UCPH
Iben M. Gjødsbøl: UCPH
Mie S. Dam: UCPH
Heidrun Øm: NTNU
Barbara Prainsack: University of Vienna
Carrie Friese: LSE
Dates
14-15 April 2027
Course location
CSS
Registration
Please register before 1 March 2027
Seats to PhD students from other Danish universities will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and according to the applicable rules. Applications from other participants will be considered after the last day of enrolment.