This talk will present an in-depth ethnographic mapping of deceased donation in a Catalan hospital. A unique site in terms of leading-edge technoscientific practices, high rates of donation and its consolidated specialised team of transplant coordinators (TCs). Dr Bea situates donation as an embedded medical practice and traces the practicalities and specificities of making donation a possibility at the hospital. The empirical accounts offer a distinctive contribution that complements and challenges existing social sciences literature about donation. The latter have predominantly focused on donation as a controversial practice through highlighting the emotional experiences of donors’ families and individual medical practitioners involved.

This empirical investigation mobilises, and further develops, STS material semiotics tools to provide an account of donation enacted as both procurement and healthcare. Ethnographic insights illustrate the shifting processes of mutual inclusion and exclusion that underpin the trajectory of integrating donation as a routinized hospital practice, along the recurring set of enduring tensions.