In this guest feature, Dr Paul Meller, Wellcome Trust, discusses how research within the social sciences and in exciting new combinations with other fields such as STEM offers huge potential to transform our understanding of life, health and wellbeing.
Life, health and wellbeing: the transformative potential of interdisciplinary social science
“Health is about human beings.”
This was the powerful opening of a recent interview with Dr Caesar Atuire about his new Wellcome Discovery Award project, which aims to bridge the gap between the rhetoric and practice of solidarity during global health emergencies. It’s a project that has brought together researchers across seven countries and across disciplines spanning bioethics, politics, philosophy, medical anthropology, and public health. It recognises health as a multidimensional concept, and emphasises the indispensable role of the social sciences, arts, and humanities in placing the needs, values and priorities of people at the heart of health research.
It’s a powerful reminder of the important role the social sciences and humanities play in interdisciplinary research, including in research that is open-ended, and that could transform health in ways we can’t anticipate today. Research of this kind, both within the social sciences and in exciting new combinations with other fields, offers huge potential to transform our understanding of life, health and wellbeing. Of course, this potential is not just limited to the sphere of health but it’s a helpful lens to apply as we reflect on the mounting national and global health challenges that occupy researchers, governments and the wider public alike.
Social Science and STEM
A lot of attention has been given recently to the potential of the social sciences in interdisciplinary spaces, especially at the boundaries with STEM disciplines. The British Academy has run its ‘Connected Knowledge’ campaign about the power of interdisciplinary research, especially where the SHAPE disciplines come together with STEM disciplines. From understanding the drivers of transmission through the Covid pandemic, to the role of health economics in modelling fall prevention solutions, social science research brings critical perspectives to complex health challenges. The Academy of Social Sciences‘ report, ‘Reimagining the recipe for research & innovation: the secret sauce of social science’ points to the essential role of the social sciences both in their own right and in combination with STEM, where there is a clear amplification effect in terms of the impact on citations, emerging technology and policy.
A huge strength of the social sciences is the role they play as part of these interdisciplinary collaborations in considering the implications of science and supporting translation into policy and practice. They are disciplines for which the impacts of policy and practice across sectors are a matter of research, and where the potential ethical, legal and social implications of STEM research are areas of critical engagement. This though does not capture the full benefit of such collaborations.
‘Discovery’ through interdisciplinary social science
Something often less visible in these interdisciplinary interactions is the mutual shaping and enriching of research that can flow between the social sciences and other fields when the research is open-ended and collaboration is embedded from the outset. The contribution made, “across the entire recipe…rather than simply being a garnish to a dish created by STEM” as Wilson et al. put it.[iv] This is a critical aspect of what makes such collaborations so exciting and potentially transformative and is certainly the case in terms of research focused on life, health and wellbeing. How, for example, could integrating concepts of care or social justice in genomic science, through collaborations with sociologists and anthropologists, lead not just to more ethical or inclusive research, but open up completely new questions and ways of conducting that research? How could economic theory and methodologies help shape the ways in which research on new biomedical technologies or the clinical applications of Artificial Intelligence are carried out? How could research on the changing configurations of pathogens and chronic disease be transformed by the deeper understanding of behaviour from social psychology and the movement and interaction of people from human geography? Without the perspectives and methodologies brought by social science disciplines, the needs, values and priorities of people most impacted by different health challenges remain opaque or misunderstood, and risk even the most scientifically advanced tools being rendered ineffective.
There are a huge range of potential new questions and approaches that could be unlocked by research that recognises the wider value that the social sciences bring to biomedical research, and vice-versa. Such collaborations are though challenging and reliant on a range of enablers. It needs investment in the skills required to work productively and knowledgably at the interfaces between fields (such as that embodied in the approach of investments like the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership); it needs rich research resources that bring together biomedical and social data, from sensor and wider ‘smart data’ to longitudinal population studies (such as those brought together in the UK by CLOSER); it needs supporting knowledge infrastructures which encourage and support early stage collaboration and ideation (such as the creative approaches adopted by centres such as the Brigstow Institute); and it needs support for a research culture and environment in which the disciplines, people and perspectives brought together are valued equally and allowed to thrive (such as those being trialled in the 24 institutions supported by Wellcome’s Institutional Fund for Research Culture).
Time and Timeliness
Most critically though are the central concepts of time and timeliness. Time, in the form of space, funding and flexibility, for researchers, and their non-academic partners, to work effectively at these intersections in ways which allow for curiosity, risk-taking and evolution of the research. Timeliness, to ensure the engagement happens at the earliest stages of research ideation and design, without which the opportunity for mutual shaping of research approaches and questions is lost.
In that context there are positive shifts in the funding landscape to incentivise and support this type of research, such as UKRI’s cross council responsive mode pilot. The Wellcome Trust is also playing its role here, placing a greater emphasis than ever on the importance of ‘Discovery Research’ – our programme which aims to generate new knowledge through longer term, curiosity-driven research across the breadth of disciplines. It’s also why Wellcome’s recently published ‘manifesto for science’ talks about three key priorities of long term funding, talented people and infrastructure. These are key to creating the environment in which interdisciplinary discovery research can thrive and take on complex challenges, transform our understanding of health, and open up the opportunity for longer-term breakthroughs and impact. We see the social sciences – in their own right and in exciting new combinations with the humanities and biomedical sciences – as key to this mission. Investment in brilliant social science and social scientists through long term commitment to discovery research and our health challenges, and in resources such as our commitment to explore the potential new forms of social data for life, health and wellbeing research, ensures we generate new understanding of life, health and wellbeing in all its social complexity.
Ultimately, we can’t meet our vision for a healthier future for everyone without that. This is I hope, amongst the many other benefits, an incentive for others to continue bringing the social sciences and STEM disciplines into productive and mutually beneficial engagement around complex health challenges and beyond.
About the author
Dr Paul Meller is a Research Lead, Discovery Research at Wellcome Trust, where he focuses on the Populations and Society theme. He previously worked at UK Research and Innovation for 13 years in a number of roles across ESRC and AHRC, latterly as an Associate Director overseeing a large portfolio across the creative industries, digital humanities, knowledge exchange and research infrastructure.
Image credit: Sam Moghadam Khamseh, Unsplash