Victor SECCO

EDUCATION

2023 - PhD in Social Anthropology – Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Thesis: “Microbiology in the waters of the Ganges: a matter of life and death”
Supervisors: Prof Penelope Harvey and Dr Soumhya Venkatesan
Awarded School of Social Sciences Studentship
2018 - Master’s degree in Social Anthropology – University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Dissertation: “Pollution, dams, and sacred water: green and saffron politics on the Ganges River”
2013 - Masters's degree in Visual Anthropology – University of Barcelona, Spain

2011 - Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences – University of São Paulo, Brazil

PUBLICATIONS

Book Chapters

Secco, V. (2024). Micro-biosocial diversity in the Ganges River: antibiotic modernity and the revival of phage therapy. In: Kavesh, M. and Fijn, N. (eds): Nurtining Alternative Futures: Living with Diversity in a More-than-Human World. Routledge. London.

Book Review

Secco, V. (2023). Science and Religion in India by Renny Thomas. Society and Culture in South Asia. 9 (1). 158-160.

CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION

2025

Medical Anthropology Europe Conference, Vienna, Austria

·       Panel convener: “Health as Ecology: Promises of health and well-being in biotechnological approaches across humans and more-than-humans”

·       Roundtable participation: “Divining the Planetary Microbiome: AI, genomics and the future of situatedness in the life sciences”

August 2025 – Reunião de Antropologia do Mercosul (RAM), Salvador, Brazil

·       Panel convener: “Antropologia sob o microscópio: explorando relações com microbios”

·       Workshop organiser: “Antropologia microscópica e multispécie: questões metodológicas sobre como fazer antropología com otras existências”

Microbiome Stewardship Summit, Microbes & Social Equity, online

·       Paper: “The political economy of emerging planetary microbial data platforms”

STS Italia Conference, Milan, Italy

·       Panel convener “Sampling and the making of good science: examining data collection practices and their implications”

Health and Environment in Anthropology, University of Durham, United Kingdom

·     Paper: “Genomic matters of exchange: the bioinformatics of body-environment relations in planetary perspective”

Association of Social Anthropologists Conference, Birmingham, United Kingdom

·     Panel convener: “Ethnography on the move: Researching itinerant practices”

·     Paper: “From field to file: Context, labour, and intimacy in a scientific expedition”

2024

Rivers, Sacred Values and Environmental Attitudes – University of Lund, Sweden

·     Invited paper: “Snakes and drains: Microbes, environmental pollution and ritual purity in the Ganga”

Antibiotic Crisis: A Global Ward Round – Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland

·     Invited paper: “Financialising phages: Communist viruses in antibiotic infrastructures”

EASST/4S Conference– Amsterdam, Netherlands

·     Panel convener: “Making samples, doing science: transforming data and matter across landscapes and labscapes”

Materiality at the intersection of Ecology and Religious Studies – Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, Italy

·     Paper: “Gangajal matters: water as ritual infrastructure”

2023

5th Conference on Anthropology of Health – UFMT, Cuiabá, Brazil

·     Paper: “Microbes: health in between molecules and ecosystems”

4th Conference of the Societa’ Italiana di Antropologia Culturale – Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

·     Paper: “Sampling with/the samplers: ethnographic and big data collection practices”

Reunião de Antropologia do Mercosul (RAM) – UFF, Niterói, Brazil

·     Paper: “Planetary health through the microscope: microbes in between anthropology and biology”

STS Italia Conference – University of Bologna, Italy

·     Paper: “Mapping microbial ecosystems: censing the unknown through molecules”

April 2023 – Association of Social Anthropologists Conference – SOAS, United Kingdom

·     Paper: “The pharmakon in the Ganges: antibiotics and phages in water”

2022

Defining the Human in Environmental Humanities – Venice International University

·       Paper: "Water bodies in between Homo microbis and Homo ritualis"

2021

Anthropology and Conservation - Royal Anthropological Institute

·       Paper: “Living with microbes and gods: anti and pro-biotic approaches to the Ganges River”

12th International Convention of Asia Scholars – International Institute for Asian Studies

·       Paper: “Snakes and Drains: myth, environment, and politics in Varanasi”

36th Conference of the International Society for Sociology of Religion

·       Paper: “Gangajal and bacteriophages: the Ganges at the intersection of science and religion”

15th Congress of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore

·       Paper: “Gangajal: Human-microbe-divine relationships by the Ganges”

Waterworlding: Reflecting on Multiple Waters – University of Marburg

·       Paper: “Swimming with the trouble: science and religion in the waters of the Ganges”

2020

Durham Postgraduate Conference – University of Durham

·       Paper: “Friend or Foe: Human-Virus Relationships and Global Health”

UNIVERSITY TEACHING

2020- 2022 - Social Anthropology Teaching Assistant – University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Key Ideas in Social Anthropology
Introduction to Ethnographic Reading
Ethnographer’s Craft (Qualitative Methodology)
 

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

Portuguese, English, Italian, Spanish, Hindi