This colloquium will draw together interdisciplinary expertise in AMR from across Edinburgh to discuss how language shapes, influences and organises understandings and responses to human microbe relationships. In 2019, the Beyond Resistance Network brought together delegates from 25 disciplines including economists, artists, anthropologists and historians, eco-psychologists, cognitive linguists, literature specialists, physicists, political science, alongside clinicians, public health physicians, epidemiologists, microbiologists, and vets for a half day workshop to discuss the impact of the military metaphor for conceptualising and responding to antimicrobial resistance. In this colloquium, we revisit this discussion to understand and critically reflect on the impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on questions of language, expertise, framing and response to contagion and microbial life.

In 2019, the colloquium was organised around a provocative statement designed spotlight language used in AMR discourse. The colloquium will catalyse collaboration across the AMR forum, invigorate interdisciplinary thinking and enable Edinburgh to contribute to an important debate at a critical moment. As the world begins to think about a post-pandemic future, what does this mean for more than human challenges such as AMR and the intersections of drug resistance, food security, zoonosis and climate change.