Wellcome is today announcing £73 million in funding for eight new Discovery Research Platforms to address a range of practical, technological and methodological barriers holding up progress across a wide array of fields. Overcoming these barriers will enable researchers to ask even more creative and boundary-defying questions.
Culture& is collaborating with the Ethox Centre at the University of Oxford as co-investigators on the Discovery Research Platform for Transformative Inclusivity in Ethics and Humanities Research (ANTITHESES). The research plans to develop new concepts, methods and tools that address issues of conflicting values in society, including real-time digital mapping of value disagreements and facilitating engagement with excluded voices and problems.
The ANTITHESES Platform for Transformative Inclusivity in Ethics and Humanities addresses an urgent need for research able to engage meaningfully with the radical value disagreements, polarisation, and informational uncertainty characteristic of contemporary medical science, practice, and policy.
Available approaches to ethics and humanities research lack the concepts, methods, and tools to do this work. They have insufficient diversity of voices, are overly safe and conservative, and overwhelmingly Western. They have tended to exclude some problems and values as not ‘worthy’ of investigation or ‘too difficult’. New approaches are needed.
The Platform’s activities, which will develop and test tools and methods for achieving this are organised under six complementary and connected thematic programmes. Bringing together expertise from history, philosophy, fine arts, design bioethics, sociology, and global bioethics, each programme addresses a different need for new concepts, methods, digital tools, and collaborative partnerships capable of engaging with radical value disagreements in medical science, practice, and policy. To ensure that they work effectively together, and benefit from expertise in other disciplines, our ‘connectors’ programme will engage with problems arising out of the convergence of these challenges to foster collaboration. “
Principal Investigator, Professor Michael Parker said: “I am absolutely delighted by this award and very excited about the opportunity it provides to collaborate with the wonderful team at Culture&. This partnership is already proving to be transformative of the way we at Ethox approach and understand our work. ANTITHESES and the collaborations it enables between Ethox, Culture& and our other partners has potential to lead to the development of much needed innovative and creative new ways to engage with some of the profound value disagreements we face today. I can’t wait to get started.”
Professor Patricia Kingori, Somerville College, Oxford said: “Culture& and Ethox Centre, University of Oxford have well-earnt reputations for innovative thinking and practice so the opportunity for us to work together and collaborate on this grant is really exciting”
Co-Investigator, Culture&’s Artistic Director, Dr Errol Francis said: “I am thrilled to be awarded this research grant with Oxford University. This is a major milestone for Culture& and we are looking forward to working with the research team. Through a series of experiments in collaboration with heritage partners, Culture& aims to address current conflicts around four crucial ethical challenges facing museums:
Is it any longer acceptable and what are the alternatives to killing animals so we can look at and study them in museums?
Under what circumstances can human remains be displayed in museums and, if so, what kind of consents and ethical frameworks should be in place?
What role could replicas, physical or digital, play in the restitution of disputed and stolen heritage?
What should ethical due diligence look like for the funding and sponsorship of museums?
Later this year, we will announce the museum partners who will be collaborating on this ground-breaking research to be conducted with heritage professionals and audiences. We are looking forward to getting started on this exciting journey of enquiry that we hope will contribute to increased understanding and cooperation in humanities and heritage.”
Image courtesy: Harrison’s Pygmy Antelope (Neotragus batesi harrisoni), Taxidermied animal remains. From the collection of Scarborough Museums and Galleries.