Ferment Meetings

Ferment Meetings are bi-weekly virtual meetings for talking about microbes in human society from an interdisciplinary perspective. In order to understand the effect of microbes on humans (and vice-versa), we need the insights of historians, writers, artists, and experts from many different fields. Our group is made up of academics and practitioners, in a wide range of disciplines, from microbiologists to medieval historians, from theologians to chefs. We approach topics through lenses of science, racial justice, sustainability, industry, and more. Given that we are very interdisciplinary, we try to make sure that the language we use in discussions is intelligible across fields.

For more information or to suggest speakers, please contact Hanna Berman (hlberman@ncsu.edu)

Upcoming Meetings: Fall 2026

This presentation aims to understand how parasites may be improving our lives through their efforts to improve their lives. Parasitism has long been a contested field due in part to the ambiguous nature of a “parasite”. We move from the possibility that some parasites provide benefits to their host, to the Parasite’s Dilemma that finds parasites wondering how far they can exploit their host without endangering themselves. But a parasite-host relationship may always be in flux, since there are generally greater rewards for taking rather than giving. The resulting tortuous parasite-host union has implications for human history, as when parasite and host become allies against common enemies and competitors. One wonders if it is ever possible to understand a parasite’s eye view of life. I hope to travel briefly to the Caribbean of the last century with my examples, and if there is time, to reflect on any wisdom we can extract from a foray into A.I.

View a recording of this conversation here:
Watch September 22, 2026 Ferment Meeting: Marcus Hall
Passcode: @IQ5KJh@

This talk is about a rare ethnographic account of fermenting rice at the 350-year-old Terada Honke, one of only two natural sake breweries in Japan. Through sensory and embodied accounts, I’ll paint a picture of how sake brewers work exclusively with endogenous bacteria, molds, and yeasts in a deliberate choreography that characterises the brewing process. In documenting these practices, I explain how brewers come to know microbial life through their rhythms and time signatures. In this talk specifically, I’ll elaborate on two ethnographic moments: the motosuri song used to prepare starter cultures (including a famous botched batch) and the ever-feared hiochi-kin and the trade-off that this brewery has to calculate to keep producing a sake viable for market.
If you are interested in learning more before the talk, Dr. Maya Hey has a book available for pre-order: https://heymayahey.com/singing-with-invisible-worlds/

Past Meetings

Spring 2026

This talk argues that the aesthetic imaginary developed in Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novel Annihilation to represent fungal spores indexes how the human is always already interpenetrated by the nonhuman environment. Ultimately, this talk proposes that the rhetorical, aesthetic, and structural depictions of these fungal spores makes visible racialization as atmospheric.

View a recording of this conversation here:
Watch January 27, 2026 Ferment Meeting: sara nisenson
Passcode: P7!LfScw

The farming systems of leafcutter ants are iconic mutualisms known for the massive scale by which millions of specialized ants cultivate fungus. Yet, crucial aspects of their farming performance, and thus mutualism stability, hinge on poorly understood cellular adaptations in the fungal cultivar. I used an integrated approach of laboratory and field experiments, advanced imaging, and -omics to explore two complementary fungus cultivar cellular adaptations underlying the ecological success of leafcutter farming systems. First, I developed a niche-based approach to explore how nutritional provisioning by ants mediates the differentiation and nutritional quality of specialized edible reward cells called gongylidia produced by the fungal cultivar. My students and I further investigated the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which nutrients are metabolized by the fungal cultivar and shunted to gongylidia. Second, like many domesticated crops farmed by humans, the fungal cultivar of leafcutter ants has evolved a type of polyploidy—where each cell can contain up to 20 nuclei. My students and I first show that loss of nuclei (and thus alleles) in vitro can cause loss of gongylidium competency and then show that massive colonies in the field are able to avoid allelic loss when clonally propagating their fungus across underground growth chambers separated by many meters. We then use single nucleus sequencing to provide genomic insights into the nucleotype diversity and distributions in hyphal networks. This research provides an integrative mechanistic framework for testing hypotheses about mutualism stability based on how partners trade nutrients relative to their intrinsic nutritional needs, and then delves into the molecular underpinnings of naturally selected crop domestication.

View a recording of this conversation here:
Watch February 10, 2026 Ferment Meeting: Jonathan Shik
Passcode: LR&UZ%6H

My presentation examines the more-than-human anti-capitalist philosophy and practice developed by contemporary Japanese writer and bread-baker Watanabe Itaru in his best-selling 2013 book The “Rotting Economy” as Found in a Rural Bakery (Inaka no panya ga mitsuketa “kusaru keizai”). I read Watanabe’s work as a guidebook for communication with microbial beings (including yeasts and molds such as kōji) and community formation centered around collaborative practices of fermentation. The “Rotting Economy” as Found in a Rural Bakery recounts Watanabe’s experience studying bread baking through various apprenticeships at organic bakeries, and his subsequent disillusionment with the forfeiture of ideals at said bakeries in the name of profit. As Watanabe discusses his eventual establishment of Talmary—the bakery he ran with his wife and children in rural Okayama Prefecture before relocating to Tottori Prefecture in 2015—he teaches his readership about the loopholes inherent in Japan’s lax laws concerning organic food and advocates instead for a rethinking of the human relationship to food consumption. He does so through a deep engagement with microbes. I am interested in how Watanabe narrates his mutualistic partnership with the wild yeasts and molds that ferment his bread, and how he positions this partnership with microbes on the fringes of Japanese society as an opportunity to explicate Marxist theory for a general readership.

Through a close reading of The “Rotting Economy” as Found in a Rural Bakery and an attempt to situate the work in a wider nexus of the critical turn toward composting (as exemplified by Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble) and cultural practices in contemporary Japan that have found DIY practitioners—including farmers, cloth workers, and composters—forging new (and yet simultaneously quite old) modes of resistance to capitalism by reestablishing notions of community that include more-than-human animals, plants, and, indeed, microbes. Some guiding questions for this research include: How does Watanabe’s work visualize microbial life and the human relationship to it? What are the ethical implications inherent in the anthropomorphizing of microbial life? Does a sense of conviviality emerge from Watanabe’s configuration of yeast and mold? And how to reckon with the nationalist imaginary that has dominated the writing and valorization of the Japanese countryside since Japan’s modernization in the late 1800s? How does Watanabe’s work push back against regressive satoyama sentiments—i.e., the ahistorical myth of a harmonious relationship to nature only to be found in rural Japan?

Ultimately, I conclude that it is precisely Watanabe’s personal relationship with wild yeast and mold that allows us to read beyond confining nationalist ideologies and encourages us to undertake our own fermentation praxis as a form of anti-capitalist resistance.

View a recording of this conversation here:
Watch February 24, 2026 Ferment Meeting: Jon Pitt
Passcode: 8i@6?Vq%

It is arbitrary that we taxonomize life on the basis of lineages and individual units. There are separate histories focused on whole ecosystems. For example, the microbiome instead of each microbe. Using this frame, we could easily say that fermenting human cultures discovered microbiomes because they discovered their phenotypes. We will discuss a taxonomy of microbiomes that is pre-Pasteurian and based on olfaction, mouthfeel, and touch. Microbial taxonomy typically considers visual or sequencing traits. However, if we focus on olfaction, is smelling a microbe any different as a form of knowing from Leeuwenhoek seeing them? What does it look like to think about microbial knowledge in a traditional or historic society?

View a recording of this conversation here:
Watch March 10, 2026 Ferment Meeting: Rob Dunn
Passcode: #NLH+s9x

Industrial yeast, mold, and bacterial starter cultures have revolutionized the technological processes underlying the production of fermented foods and beverages. Their genomes, phylogenetic relationships, and physiological properties have been extensively characterized. In parallel, recent advances have greatly expanded our understanding of the microbial diversity present in traditionally fermented foods and beverages, accompanied by growing interest in harnessing this diversity for industrial and biotechnological applications. An increasing number of companies now offer strains or mixed starter cultures derived from traditional and indigenous fermentations, enabling their global distribution. Concurrently, more and more works focus on the development of probiotic products based on microbes originating from these systems. The study of such microbial products not only provides insights into previously underexplored fermentation environments but also offers opportunities to track how these organisms colonize and adapt to novel niches in new geographic regions, including industrial-scale processes and even the human host. Paradoxically, however, the widespread dissemination and use of standardized starter cultures may threaten the preservation of native microbial diversity and the traditional knowledge associated with specific fermentation practices. Here, I review several product groups, including sourdough, farmhouse ales, lambics, cocoa fermentations, and rice wines, with a focus on company practices and the availability of strains derived from traditional sources. I further explore how interspecies microbial interactions, shaped by centuries of artisanal use, may be altered or lost during industrialization. Additionally, I discuss the potential impacts of hybridization and genetic modification on the original gene pools of these microorganisms, and consider the broader implications for the preservation of microbial and cultural heritage.

View a recording of this conversation here:
Watch March 24, 2026 Ferment Meeting: Walter Pfliegler
Passcode: +7y%JgeC

Aspergillus oryzae is a filamentous fungus widely known for the production of fermented foods such as soy sauce, miso, and sake. Less widely recognized are the fermentation traditions that preceded its domestication: spontaneous solid-state fermentation starters (SSFSs).

More commonly known as qu in China, chowan in India, in Korea, or banh men in Vietnam, these starters are documented across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America as recurring biotechnologies for the production of alcoholic beverages, fermented pastes, and sauces.

SSFSs are composed of diverse communities of filamentous fungi, yeasts, and bacteria that serve as enzyme-rich inocula. Unlike single microbial strains, this microbial diversity enables transformations across a broad range of plant-based substrates, side-streams, and process conditions. Understanding these systems can support the development of circular, climate-resilient food systems rooted in local supply chains; drive innovation in nutrient- and flavor-rich fermentations; and preserve SSFSs as eco-cultural reservoirs of food-relevant microorganisms.

Beyond their practical applications, SSFS traditions also provide a window into the ecological origins and domestication of fungi such as A. oryzae. Studying these systems highlights reservoirs of food-relevant fungi with long histories of safe use and offers new perspectives on historical fermentation technologies, including ancient beverages such as Sumerian beer.

View a recording of this conversation here:
Watch April 7, 2026 Ferment Meeting: Kevin Qiu
Passcode: &%1*GNyJ

Why are humans attracted to alcohol? The answer might be buried in the fruit-filled diet of our early ancestors. Following the ‘Drunken Monkey’ hypothesis, I measured the alcohol content in fruits eaten by our nearest relatives, chimpanzees, and estimated that they consume on average 14 grams of ethanol, or 1–2 drinks, per day. I also collected their urine and found elevated levels of ethyl glucuronide, a product of ethanol metabolism in the liver. The next logical step is to examine the fruit pulp microbiome, which I will get to do at a savanna baboon site called Amboseli in Kenya. I am also interested in the origin of brewer’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), in both an ecological sense and in the sense of domestication. I will argue that the global population demographic model for brewer’s yeast is incomplete. Let’s track the evolutionary trail from fermented forest fruit to the mysterious origins of intentionally directed fermentation.

View a recording of this conversation here:
Watch April 21, 2026 Ferment Meeting: Aleksey Maro
Passcode: z3fy&!AS

At the turn of the century, Michael Pollen summarised decades of food and nutrition research into seven simple words: ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’ Fast forward twenty years, the phrase echoes with perhaps more urgency, yet it falls short of the challenges faced when advising populations to drop habitual dietary patterns for plants. Notably, cultural and biological reasons cause friction from agricultural livelihoods to indigestion of plant compounds. Yet, with current understandings of the role of microbes in the human gut and fermented food matrices, Michael Pollan could update his phrase to: ‘Eat that which has already been eaten.’

Indeed, in 2020, Michael Gänzle suggested food fermentation as ‘an essential ex situ digestion step in agricultural societies’ and, since the 1970s, fermentation technology has evolved to be more than just industrial process lines and reproducible products. The nutritional benefits are clear but emerging research in biodiversity and environmental biotechnology brings back an old question: what about the process? From microbial species diversity to fertility depression, the hidden factors of processing present a potentially new concept: food as an orchestrated holobiont and the microbial exposures along its production.

As a part of my doctoral research, I am investigating the cross-utilisation of tempeh and koji fermentation practices for enhanced digestibility of Nordic-grown legumes and their subsequent impact on human gut physiology. In this talk, I will present the context of this work and some preliminary results on the degradation of anti-nutritive compounds in these fermentations. With this, I reflect on my experiences jumping between academic and artisan worlds from sourdough to solid-state, microbial communities to single strains, and contemplate the artisan as society’s microbial therapist.

View a recording of this conversation here:
Watch May 5, 2026 Ferment Meeting: Finlay Sim
Passcode: Vr665AN^

Fall 2025

In this talk at the intersection of art and science, we discuss using drawing to explore the human mycobiome. Gemma Anderson describes her work on a body map of the human mycobiome to be displayed in the exhibition Living Labyrinths: Art & Fungi, opening in autumn 2026 at RAMM.

Karl Persson describes his work exploring the diversity of yeasts isolated from honey collected by citizen scientists.

Veronica Sinotte and Sevgi Mutlu Sirakova discuss their interdisciplinary work on traditional practices of milk fermentation and the related microbes found in ants.

Read more about their work here and here.

Other Previous Guest Speakers and Topics

Sandra Breum Anderson
Evolutionary biologist
Helicobacter mysteries

Oya Inanli
Food biotechnologist
Ancient Norwegian beer yeast

 Ishen (Jason) Tsai
Evolutionary biologist
Yeast ancestry and diversity in Taiwan

Maxime Borry
Bioinformatician
King Herod’s Wine

Tate Paulette
Historian
Mesopotamian Beer

Aviaja Hauptmann
Microbiologist
Inuit Fermentation and creating a new biology program in Greenland