Sophia Roosth is an anthropologist who writes about contemporary life and earth sciences. She is the author of Synthetic: How Life Got Made (2017), an ethnography of synthetic biologists that documents the profound shifts biology has undergone in the post-genomic age. Her next book, The Quick and the Dead, will offer a historically and ethnographically informed travelogue into the worlds of contemporary geobiologists, scientists seeking ancient microbial life-forms fossilized in stone. She has published widely in journals including Critical Inquiry, Representations, differences, American Anthropologist, Science, and Grey Room, as well as in popular publications such as Slate, The Los Angeles Review of Books, American Scientist, e-flux, and Aeon. Roosth is Associate Professor at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She is a Max Planck Society Sabbatical Award Laureate, and her work has also been supported by a Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, as well as fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.