Redefining STEM: Science of Traveller Ethnicity and Microbiome
Year Awarded
2020
Amount
€49,937
- Organisation:University College Cork (UCC)
- Audience:Primary Students, Primary Teachers, General Public, Policy Makers
- Format:Informal Education
- Location:Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Mayo, Westmeath, national
- Topic:Science
Project Summary
We will promote science among Irish Travellers by highlighting how microbiome science, can shed new light on their ethnic identity, history and way of life. We have already engaged with Irish Travellers in Cork to study their microbiome, i.e. the system of microbes that live in and on our bodies. We have shown that they retain an ancestral, non-industrialized microbiome distinct from that of the settled, non-Traveller community. This has important health implications for Travellers but also for the rest of society, which will receive global attention in the prestigious high impact journal Nature Medicine. The discovery of the unique microbiome of Irish Travellers raises several issues: it challenges current concepts of a ‘normal’ microbiome; shows the importance of non-dietary factors in driving microbiome composition; shows how the culture of an ethnic minority helps retain a desirable microbiome; and raises public health concerns when an ethnic minority is pressured to change lifestyle.
We believe that microbiome science is a wonderful opportunity for Irish Travellers to explore their ethnicity in a way that contributes to everyone’s understanding of the microbiome. We propose two specific aims: (1) to create with Travellers ways of conveying our findings and their significance to the wider Traveller community using inter alia an animated video with the voices of Traveller people and (2) to continue engaging with Travellers to explore unanswered questions about how their ethnicity has influenced their microbiome and how it can be retained for health benefit.