The 2019 Beyond Resistance Colloquium was held at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation on the 11th of January where researchers, practitioners and experts from over 25 disciplines gathered in response to the provocation:

The language we use to frame our relationship with microbes has profound effects. ‘Crises’ are imminent with the rise of microbial resistance; we face a looming ‘apocalypse’ as the antibiotics fail to work; we ‘fight’ disease, and structure public health campaigns around ‘military style’ campaigns. As we divide microbes into those that are friendly, and those ‘superbugs’ that are ‘enemies’ we barely think of the impact that this language has. Yet we as humans we are comprised of viruses, bacteria and fungi such that our bodies are inseparable from these. This way we understand human-microbe relations has had profound effects; but as the antibiotic era draws to an end, we now need new ways of reconceptualising our relationship with microbes.

Through a series of presentations addressing language and microbes from a diverse range of disciplines – social sciences, the arts, microbiologists, veterinary scientists, ecologists, economists, philosophers – the discussion centred around how we frame our understanding of human-microbe relations. Can we reimagine this relationship otherwise?