Our work sought to understand the changing nature of these relations and obligations through new social and historical research on:
- The historical relations that forged the shared understandings across scientific practice, animal welfare and health benefits embodied in the UK’s Animals (in Science Procedures) Act in 1986
- The contemporary challenges emerging as scientific practices and social expectations change established patterns of laboratory animal use and supply, professional roles and responsibilities, and public and patient engagements
- The forms of dialogue between stakeholders, scientists, and publics that might contribute to remaking social contracts across the animal research nexus in the UK
Using animals in scientific research has been critical to the development of modern medicine. Animal research is also contingent on a complex network of social relations and ethical obligations across science and society, which are both formally constituted through law, and informal or assumed. These entanglements can be understood as the Animal Research Nexus.
This research programme was funded by the Wellcome Trust (2017-2023). Our programme of research brought together leading researchers on the social and historical dimensions of animal research, uniting the strengths of five institutions, engaging creative practitioners, and advancing the work of early career researchers and PhD students.
Projects
Site tags
AnNex tagged content
A list of site content that is tagged as Animal Research Nexus – grouped by type of content.
Publications
Welcome to the final issue of the AnNex newsletter. Our final newsletter summarises some of our closing events, forthcoming publications, and ongoing plans.
This book features highlights from the Animal Research Nexus Programme to demonstrates how the humanities and social sciences can contribute to understanding what is created through animal procedures - including constitutional forms of research governance, different institutional cultures of care, the professional careers of scientists and veterinarians, collaborations with patients and publics, and research animals, specially bred for experiments or surplus to requirements.
Developing the idea of the animal research nexus, this book explores how connections and disconnections are made between these different elements, how these have reshaped each other historically, and how they configure the current practice and policy of UK animal research.
This short report offers a review of some of the literature on reflexive practice in qualitative research teams. In bringing together some of the learnings and resources around team-based reflexivity, this report may offer a useful overview for planning and enacting future team-based research endeavours.
Our recent work has explored visibility - of animals, practices, and labour - in animal research.
Animal research is contingent on a complex network of relations and assurances across science and society, which are both formally constituted through law and informal or assumed. In this paper, we propose these entanglements can be studied through an approach that understands animal research as a nexus spanning the domains of science, health and animal welfare.
This Statement explains how the Animal Research Nexus Team makes use of any personal information collected about you in connection with our research.
Improving laboratory animal science and welfare involves many questions which social scientists and humanities scholars have researched, or have the capacity to inform. This paper outlines our “Collaborative Agenda for Future Humanities and Social Scientific Research on Laboratory Animal Science and
In our experience so far, one aspect of working collaboratively is that tacit assumptions about academic working practices need to be made explicit. This report aims to highlight our working assumptions about the topic of publication ethics.
Blog entry
We are excited to announce our new edited volume – Researching Animal Research – forthcoming (January 2024) with Manchester University Press.
March 2019 saw the launch of the AnNex newsletter, a (roughly) quarterly offering to keep stakeholders up to date with the project, and we’ve been deli
Our approach to research emphasises cross-project collaborations and transdisciplinary thinking. But what does this mean, in practical terms, for the work that we do and for our participants?
At the start of this project we stated one of our key objectives was to generate new cultures of communication across science, health and animal welfare, which would shape the future of animal research in the UK.
Events
The Animal Research Nexus Programme is hosting a conference entitled 'Researching Animal Research' on 30th – 31st of March at the Wellcome Collection in London.
Much social scientific, philosophical and historical work on animal research has followed the enclosures around research communities and the relatively closed nature of animal research to highlight the construction of boundaries around animal rese
In June 2018, the Animal Research Nexus Team met with the Programme Advisory Committee, Project Advisors, and other invited colleagues.