Singing with Invisible Worlds: Fermenting Sake on Microbial Time

Join Maya Hey at the first event of the Speculative Life Speaker Series 2026/27!

Maya Hey is a Concordia alumna and current postdoctoral researcher at the Environmental Humanities Laboratory based in Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology and a core member of the Centre for the Social Study of Microbes in Helsinki.

Her new book with University of Minnesota Press is titled Singing with Invisible Worlds: Fermenting Sake on Microbial Time. It theorizes human–microbe relationships through a rare ethnographic account of the fermentation process at one of only two natural sake breweries in Japan. By showing how brewers work with bacteria, molds, and yeasts, Maya Hey reveals that ambient microbes are not controlled but courted and cultivated using practices out of the lab. With implications for feminist theory, science and technology studies, and multispecies ethnography, this book examines how to improvise with microbes in uncertain futures.

On Friday, October 2, Maya joins us as the first speaker of the Speculative Life Speaker Series 2026/27 to talk about her new book and her journey from her doctoral studies at Concordia to publishing a book!! There will also be time and space to ask Maya any questions you may have about her work.

We are excited to welcome you at the event!