Leadership for the
ECOZOIC

Martin Miller is an anthropologist of science and technology, religion and secularism, and ecology. He is currently an L4E Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. His research explores the moral, political, and spiritual dimensions of human-soil relations.
 

His current book project is an ethnography of soil and plant scientists in the Netherlands, following the rise of the soil microbiome as a critical frontier of ecological discovery and national intervention. Miller's research examines how communities of 'green life scientists' understand, value, and engage with soils as living materials. He analyzes the moral and spiritual worldviews that shape scientists' efforts to envision and create alternative techno-environmental futures. 
 

Miller's research has two interrelated objectives. The first is to excavate the historical connections between religion and biology, particularly in Europe. The second is to observe how secular meanings of life, earth, and energy are ongoingly negotiated and formed within technoscientific cultures. He is broadly interested in the reformation of secular moralities and cosmologies in an age of rapid ecological and technological change.
 

He earned his Ph.D. from New York University, and his research has received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council.