Can the social sciences and humanities ‘save’ veterinary medicine?
Can the social sciences and humanities ‘save’ veterinary medicine?
Over three days in July 2022, colleagues from the UK and beyond gathered online to discuss the thorny question of veterinary expertise.
The event was funded by the British Academy/Wellcome Trust, and was co-convened by three academics. Professor Pru Hobson-West (who leads the Nottingham arm of the Animal Research Programme), Dr Alistair Anderson (who previously worked on Annex as part of our focus on the Named Veterinary Surgeon), and Professor Kate Millar (University of Nottingham colleague, and member of the Annex Programme Advisory Committee). Contributors included scholars from a variety of countries and career levels. Dr Robert Kirk (University of Manchester) also kindly participated as one of the session chairs. The audience comprised social scientists/humanities scholars, ethicists, and veterinary surgeons, with some individuals self-identifying as ticking all of those boxes.
The first session asked ‘how is veterinary expertise changing?’. Looking backwards, presentations revealed the distinct historical trajectory of the veterinary profession, having regularly needed to demarcate and defend their professional territory. Session two moved on to ask ‘how does veterinary expertise become contested?’. Speakers drew on a wide range of topics and projects to give examples of the way social science research can help illuminate these contestations. Session three used the specific lens of ethics, to explore ‘what ethical dilemmas emerge from contested veterinary expertise?’. The presentations explored examples of dilemmas and, crucially, discussed whether the response should be about more support, training or tools, or a greater recognition of the inherent tensions at the heart of the profession.
Finally, session four looked wider, to consider future prospects. Some presentations focused more on the how, in terms of projects or infrastructure that are necessary for this emerging field. Other presentations focused on the why – why is it that we want or need to apply social scientific, humanities and ethical lenses to the topic of vets and veterinary expertise? One provocative presentation, by Dr Lisa Moses from Harvard University, put this very neatly with the title ‘Can the Humanities Save Veterinary Medicine?’. She argued that veterinarians tend to have limited knowledge of ethics, and that opportunities to cultivate a ‘moral imagination’ are increasingly urgent.
All these issues are of particular interest to the Annex stream of work on people and professions, and the project which focuses on the role of the vet in the lab. As some of us have argued elsewhere, it is not possible to understand animal research without an appreciation of the role of the Named Veterinary Surgeon (NVS); equally, the NVS role cannot be understood without a wider understanding of the challenges facing the veterinary profession. However, the subjects raised – about expertise, knowledge, controversy, and how best to ‘do’ interdisciplinarity are core to the wider Annex endeavour, and how we research, write about, and participate in, the Animal Research Nexus.
The convenors would like to thank the British Academy, the Wellcome Trust, speakers, chairs and audience members, and all those who enthusiastically tweeted about the event and the issues raised. Please follow this link for the conference website, or this link for the conference programme.
Blog authored by: Pru Hobson-West, Alistair Anderson, and Kate Millar, University of Nottingham, UK.