Beyond Discipline: New Engagements with Science, Medicine & the Rural

New Engagements in Scientific and Rural Ecologies

New Engagements in Scientific and Rural Ecologies, a new theme, catalyses areas of interdisciplinary working: Art and the Rural (involving challenge-led work by PGR Sallis with the Anthropocene Research Group), and Art and Medical Sciences (PGR Turner, who leads the Arts & Biomedical Science group). Growing out of the AHRC-funded Northumbrian Exchanges (Pollock 2014), which examined the contribution of visual art within the rural cultural economy, research with the Centre for Rural Economy developed further shared interests in the rural as a differentiated site of practice. An expanding network with organisations such as VARC (Visual Arts in Rural Communities) and Allenheads Contemporary Arts has an international dimension through an ESRC collaboration grant, enabling Japan/UK exchange visits to explore the role of art in rural development in each country (Pollock, 2020). Collaborative projects such as A Scientific Encounter (2017, with Montpellier University) explored through artistic research how we see the world through scientific objects, and how those objects affect us.