The increasingly rapid evolution of microbial resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs (antimicrobial resistance; AMR) poses a profound threat to human health.Global and national policies to
address this crisis are increasingly recognising the need to engage research knowledge and action from disciplines outwith medical sciences. However, to date, the actual and potential contribution that disciplines from the arts and humanities (A&H) can make has not been substantively articulated or illustrated.
This report addresses this need firstly by analysing 11 recent research projects funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (UKRI AHRC) that focused on AMR primarily in relation to Indoor and Built Environments. Consideration of the various contexts, aims, methodologies and outcomes of these studies is informed by findings from a questionnaire survey of the research teams (40 respondents), with particular focus on A&H contributions and interdisciplinary working. An emergent set of themes is then used as a basis for broader consideration of the value that A&H can bring. This is informed by relevant literature and by questionnaire responses from a group of 10 other researchers involved in related UK and/or international research.
The focal set of projects spanned a range of settings: homes, a veterinary surgery, primary schools, community pharmacies; community and hospital nursing contexts; out-patient clinics, and hospital operating theatres. All aimed to better understand a particular phenomenon in context and to co-develop practices/interventions that would help address AMR, whether directly or more broadly through infection prevention and control. The disciplines of design and architecture were particularly prominent, especially in productive collaborations with microbiology. Inputs from history were also often influential. Significantly, co-design approaches involving extensive participation from collaborating end-user groups were a key feature of the majority of the projects.
The report identifies a distinctive set of attributes that A&H approaches can contribute to research and developments addressing AMR. These comprise: imagination and creativity in framing new research questions from different angles, including questioning assumptions/orthodoxies; expertise in using visual communications to evince the abstract issue of AMR; expertise in the principles and practices of co-design for co-development; leveraging the explanatory power of history; offering various valuable ways of thinking, seeing, understanding, creating and presenting; commitment to collaborative interdisciplinary working that explores new ways of integrating knowledge; curiosity and creative response to emergent issues; and delivering a range of meaningful impacts and outputs.
Importantly, the report shows that these attributes can drive forward AMR-focused work that is highly interdisciplinary in nature. As such, it is contended that arts and humanities should not be seen as an appendage that brings added value to primarily medical endeavours in this field. Rather A&H approaches should be seen as contributing inherent, fundamental value. The need for more national and international infrastructure funding and support for interdisciplinary work to address AMR is highlighted. Within this context, the contributions of the arts and humanities (and social sciences) provide particular potential. This has been emphatically underlined by the present global public health emergency of COVID-19, where the limitations of seeking solely medical solutions to a complex global problem are only too apparent. The report concludes by highlighting the relevance of A&H approaches to the COVID-19 situation, while emphasising the ongoing imperative for more interdisciplinary research and development work to address AMR.
