Commons
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Commons //
Narrating Culture through the Living World of Microbes.
How do we make the invisible visible?
Commons (noun) A shared resource shaped, maintained, and sustained by collective participation and responsibility.MFI Commons is our cultural and narrative companion to the scientific work of MFI Continuum. It is where our deep respect for microbiome science opens outward, into language, story, and shared curiosity. This journal exists to help microbiome knowledge feel less distant and far more relatable; something to think with, talk about, and carry into our everyday lives.
MFI Commons translates microbiome research into essays, conversations, and frameworks that invite readers in, connecting scientific insight to imagination, and the ways we relate to ourselves, environments, and each other.
Here, microbes are our collaborators in the unfolding stories of human and planetary continuity. We recognise them as invisible co-creators within the living systems that sustain us.
MSI Commons is a space to explore these relationships together; and to reflect on what it means to live well within a shared microbial world. We hope you will join us in imagining the microbiome.
Micro 002: The Microbiome as Terrain & Atmosphere
How do we conceptualise something microscopic and unseen, yet everpresent in our world?
Ecology Through the Lens of the Microbiome
Tracing how microbial life might restructure our understanding of interdependence, climate, and care; challenging the idea that we exist separately from the systems that sustain us.
What Is Cultural Work In The Context of The Microbiome?
What does it mean to approach the microbiome not only as a as a cultural subject? In this essay, we explore how microbial life invites us to rethink knowledge, relationship, care and what it means to be human in an interconnected world.
Micro 001: We’re Obsessed With Microbes.
We’re obsessed with microbes, because they change how we see everything. Our ‘Micro’ series offer short snippets outside of our long-form essays that detail some of the ideas behind our microbiome worldview.
How We See Interdependence as a Framework for Reality
This essay is a starting point for us to share how we’re thinking about interdependence as both a biological reality and a guiding principle, as we explore how these systems might become more visibly experienced.
Submit your work
We invite researchers and practitioners committed to rigorous inquiry, ecological context, and long-term systems understanding. Submissions may include original research, longitudinal studies, methodological innovation, and interdisciplinary analysis that reflect the complexity of microbial–human–environmental relationships.