Michele Salluce
PhD student
I completed both my Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and my Master’s degree in Philosophical Sciences at the University of Bologna, Italy. My Master’s thesis, The Hallucinating Self: Constructing Self and Reality Through Embodied Experience, examined the construction of selfhood through embodied and predictive processes, with particular attention to altered states of consciousness. I am currently a PhD Fellow in Philosophy of Science at the University of Copenhagen and a member of the TRANSCEND Doctoral Network. I am joining the Genzel Lab as a guest researcher for a secondment as part of my PhD training, under the co-supervision of Lisa Genzel. During my stay, I will conduct ethnographic fieldwork alongside the lab’s scientists, studying their experimental practices and methodological decisions.
My PhD project examines how animal models are constructed and used in contemporary neuroscience. Its central question is whether—and under what conditions - we can acquire translational knowledge from animal experimentation. Although animal models remain central to biomedical research and preclinical drug development, it is widely debated whether and how findings obtained in animals can inform our understanding of human biology and disease. Translational difficulties and problems with the reproducibility of preclinical findings have motivated calls to replace animal models with alternative methods, including organoids and organ-on-chip technologies. However, the possibilities for replacement remain limited in fields such as neuroscience, where investigating behaviour, cognition, and interactions across multiple biological systems often requires studying an intact organism. My project therefore develops a nuanced and empirically informed philosophical analysis of the current and future roles of animal models, with the aim of understanding how researchers can select and combine different models for specific epistemic purposes.