BIO
Maya Hey is an expert on human–microbe relations in food settings, holding degrees in dietetics, food studies, and communications. She is the author of the book Singing with Invisible Worlds: Fermenting Sake on Microbial Time, forthcoming with the University of Minnesota Press.
She is currently a postdoctoral researcher with the Centre for the Social Study of Microbes at the University of Helsinki. She is also the recipient of a Formas grant for early career scholars for a project on microbial time, which will start in Spring 2026 at the Environmental Humanities Lab at KTH Royal Technical Institute in Sweden.
Her research brings together science and technology studies, cultural studies, and food studies, alongside commitments to practice-based methodologies, feminist/queer theory, and posthuman/more-than-human sensibilities. Her current work focuses on material practices—like fermentation—and how we come to know microbial life. She is particularly interested in multiple ways of knowing microbes (through senses, through labs) and who can lay claim to microbial know-how. Across collaborative projects, she brings a humanities and social science perspective to the life sciences, calling upon intersectional, non-Western, and multispecies approaches to map out human response-ability in a highly microbial world.
Her work experience spans preschools, chemistry labs, culinary kitchens, organic farms, food banks, and retail markets, where she has cumulatively garnered over 15 years of experience facilitating discussions around contemporary food and health issues. She leads the group fff|food feminism fermentation and is passionate about open education and pedagogy.
She tweets @heymayahey and shares images @heymayahey as well. You can find her CV and list of publications at the bottom of the Portfolio page.
Previous research, ACADEMIC BACKGROUND & TEACHING APPOINTMENTS
Ph.D. Communication Studies
M.A. Food Culture and Communications
B.S. Dietetics and Food Administration
ORCiD record
YH research portal
ResearchGate
Maya Hey completed her PhD at Concordia University (Communication Studies, with distinction) in 2021 as a Vanier scholar, with research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Government of Canada). Her doctoral research examined fermentation as a way to theorise communications in human–microbe relationships, based on a sensory ethnography conducted in Japan. While at Concordia, she was also a recipient of the Public Scholars Award (2019) from the School of Graduate Studies and served as a former Fellow of the Faculty of Arts and Science. Prior, she completed her master’s degree in Food Culture and Communication at the Università degli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche (Pollenzo, Italy) and earned a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition, Dietetics, and Food Administration with an emphasis in chemistry.
Previous research topics include synthetic biotechnologies and responsible innovation (2021-2022, Future Organisms), intersectionality in the Canadian context (2018-2019, Intersectionality Hub), research-creation and practice-based methods (2017-2018, Hexagram), enzymatic potential of koji (2016, Nordic Food Lab), ractopamine in the water supply (2014, Mezyk Lab), and discourses of food safety in post-Fukushima Japan (2013).
Her departmental appointments have ranged in discipline from media studies to rhetoric to sociology, with teaching experience in critical thinking, articulation theory, special topics in food/media, and hands-on workshops. At Colorado State University (2021-2022), she taught courses on composition and rhetoric to undergraduate science majors. She also developed a pilot course as part of an innovative first-year curriculum sponsored by the Teagle Foundation.
Maya Hey 