TechnEmotion: The Interaction between Technology and Emotion in Transplant Medicine

TechnEmotion deals with the interaction between technology and emotion in organ transplantation. The hope of solving the constant organ shortage gives rise to many new medical technologies presenting us with new treatment options, new ethical dilemmas and new ways of interfering with human and animal bodies. January 2022, American surgeons transplanted a heart from a genetically modified pig to a human patient, donated organs can now function and be optimized in machines, babies are born from a transplanted uterus and in 2022, Denmark will implement a new death criterion for organ donors, donation after circulatory death.

These new technologies challenge well-known boundaries between life and death, body and machine, humans and animals and make us contemplate what it means to be human. Such medico-technological advancements of organ transplantation expand the practical, ethical, and legal margins of modern medicine and redefine human life and death. However, transplant technologies depend not only on scientific innovation, but also largely on willing donors and patients, cultural acceptance, and public legitimacy. Emotions matter, but where, for whom, and how do they come to play a role? Focusing on emotional practices, TechnEmotion investigates how new technologies both evoke and depend on human emotion.

TechnEmotion researchers will conduct fieldwork in innovative areas such as donation after circulatory death, organs in machines, uterus transplantation, anonymous kidney donation, stem cell research, and xeno-transplantation (human-animal). Through anthropological methods such as participant observation, interviews and digital ethnography, we study close up how emotions are expressed, used and what significance they have when patients, families, health professionals and political actors face, work with or communicate new transplant technologies.

Project Members:

• Anja Marie Bornø Jensen, Associate Professor (PI)
  
• Zainab Sheikh, Postdoc
  
  
• Sofie á Rogvi, Ph.d. 
  
  
• Lesley A. Sharp, Professor Columbia University New York
  
  
• Janne Sørensen, project coordinator 
  
  
• Sif Sofie Patursson Vange, Student assistant

Advisory Board:

• Professor Andreas Roepstorff, School of Culture and Society, Århus University
  
  
• Professor Ayo Wahlberg, Dept of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
  
  
• Professor Tine Gammeltoft, Dept of of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen   

International Collaborators:

• Professor Janelle Taylor, University of Toronto
• Senior Lecturer Amy Hinterberger, Kings College London
  
  
• Senior Lecturer Jessie Cooper, City University London