Georgia is a lecturer in the TUM RESET Master’s Program and a postdoctoral researcher in the Science and Technology Policy Group (Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller). She holds an interdisciplinary research background in Science and Technology Studies (STS), Social Anthropology, and Comparative Cultural Studies.
Her research primarily focuses on the anthropology and epistemology of the life sciences, with particular attention to environmental epigenetics and mental health policy. More recently, she has been exploring emerging conceptualisations of trauma and their implication for trauma-informed care practices in refugee camps and therapeutic settings.
She received her MA in European Ethnology with a focus on STS from Humboldt University of Berlin in 2015. Her thesis offers an ethnographic and practice-theoretical analysis of tensions in diagnostic and therapeutic care for refugees, shaped by conflicting legal and medical demands. From 2015 to 2020, she pursued her dissertation at the Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCTS). Her dissertation examines how environmental epigenetics has been adopted and adapted as a new style of thought and experimentation in psychiatric research on stress. It highlights how “the environment” functions both as an epistemic object and as a disruptive factor, conceptualised as unintended environments. Her work ultimately raises ethical and political questions that challenge dominant notions of what counts as evidence and knowledge in epigenetic research.
From 2018 to 2021, she was a research associate in the DFG-funded project Situating Environmental Epigenetics. A Comparative, Actor-Centered Study of Environmental Epigenetics as an Emergent Research Approach in Three Research Fields. Since 2024, she has been co-principal investigator of the project Early Life Adversity, Epigenetics & Parenthood: New Familial Responsibilities?, funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts.
Timeframe: 2024-2027
Funding Institution: Bavarian Ministry for Science and Art
Description: This project explores the academic and social discourses surrounding the long-term health effects of early-life adversity. In particular, we investigate how these discourses evolve and influence conceptions of family and responsibility.
Using a mix of social science methods, we investigate how family is conceptualized and positioned in the discourse surrounding the health consequences of early-life adversity, and what ideas about familial responsibility for health emerge. In this context, our research also analyzes which discriminatory narratives arise from these discourses. These narratives can not only disproportionately affect those directly impacted, but also overemphasize responsibility on groups, such as mothers. Finally, through a participatory workshop bringing together parents, researchers, and other stakeholders, we aim to intervene in the discourse and critically examine and reinterpret the relationship between family, childhood experiences, and health, particularly with regard to issues of social justice.
Timeframe: 2018-2021
Funding Institution: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Description: Epigenetics explores changes in gene expression that do not result from gene mutation, but from chemical modifications on the DNA. In recent years, such epigenetic modifications have been found to respond to numerous stimuli from the environment – such as toxins, nutrition, trauma or stress – giving rise to the field of ‘environmental epigenetics’. By proposing mechanisms for how such factors can alter gene expression, environmental epigenetics offers important novel perspectives for understanding body, health and illness as ‘biosocial’. However, it is yet unclear what the specific impact of such perspectives might be in different research areas within the life sciences and how approaches from environmental epigenetics might affect understandings of body, health and illness differently in different fields.
This project thus takes a comparative approach and studies how approaches from environmental epigenetics are adopted and adapted in three research fields of great relevance for public health: nutritional epidemiology, environmental toxicology, and the pathophysiology of mood & anxiety. To this end, the project team uses qualitative social science research methods such as interviews, ethnographic observation and document analysis. By taking this comparative approach the project design gives room to the possibility that environmental epigenetics might constitute different “epistemic things” (Rheinberger, 1997) in different research contexts with different social and political implications. This approach builds on insights from Science & Technology Studies that emphasize the situated character of knowledge production (Haraway, 1988; Knorr-Cetina, 1999) and the need for context-sensitive research approaches (Jasanoff, 2004). Beyond contributing to social science debates the project will actively promote constructive interdisciplinary dialogue between social and life sciences.
- Samaras, G. & Müller, R. (2025). What’s it got to do with the Brain? Mobilising and Doing Clinical Relevance in Epigenetic Psychiatric Research. Minerva. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-025-09575-1
- Rossmann, S., & Samaras, G. (2024). Doing Environments in DOHaD and Epigenetics. In The Handbook of DOHaD and Society (pp. 249-257). Cambridge University Press.
- Bernhardt, K., Le Beherec, S., Uppendahl, J. R., Fleischmann, M., Klosinski, M., Rivera, L. M., ... & Hahnefeld, A. (2024). Young children’s development after forced displacement: a systematic review. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 18(1), 20. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-024-00711-5
- Samaras, Georgia (2019): „Care Revisited. Behandeln und Begutachten als Spannungsfeld in der psychiatrischen Praxis mit Flüchtlingen.“ In: Binder, Beate et al. (ed.) Care: Praktiken und Politiken der Fürsorge: Ethnographische und geschlechtertheoretische Perspektiven. Opladen, Berlin & Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 279-92.
- Müller, Ruth & Samaras, Georgia (2018): “Epigenetics and Aging Research. Between Adult Malleability and Early Life Programming.” BioSocieties,1-22.
- Müller, Ruth/ Hanson, Claire/ Hanson, Mark/ Penkler, Michael/ Samaras, Georgia et al. (2107): “The Biosocial Genome? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Environmental Epigenetics, Health and Society.” EMBO reports, 18(10), 1677-82.
- Forschungskollektiv Psychiatrische Praxen (2014): „Psychiatrische Behandlung als vielfältige Praxis.“ In: Bister, Milena D. & Niewöhner, Jörg (Hrsg.): Alltag in der Psychiatrie im Wandel. Ethnographische Perspektiven auf Wissen, Technologie und Autonomie. Berliner Blätter. Berlin: Panama Verlag, Bd.66 / 2014, 22-97.
Selection
- Environmental Epigenetics and Mental Health Research: Enacting Trauma in the Lab.EASST Conference, Lancaster (Juli 2018).
- The Plasticity of Epigenetics: An Ethnography of the Enactment of Epigenetic Perspectives in a Psychiatric Research Laboratory. Society for the Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Boston (September 2017).
- Illness and Asylum Policy: Care in a Berlin Psychiatric Clinic.EASST Conference, Barcelona (September 2016).
- Psychologische Gutachten, Aufenthaltsrecht und Care: Behandeln und Begutachten als Spannungsfeld in der psychologischen Fürsorge für Migrant*innen mit ungeklärtem Aufenthaltsstatus. Arbeitstagung der Kommission Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung in der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde (dgv), Hamburg (Februar 2016).