In an age of social media and self-curation, bodies are critical to how we construct and present our identities. The roots of this lie in the nineteenth century, when the body became a powerful mechanism for reading inner qualities from external appearances. Our project interrogates and challenges this inheritance by studying the Victorian hand. Since prehistory, humans have used the hand to navigate and symbolise themselves and their place in the world through art and craft, touch and manipulation. However, it was in the Victorian era when the hand came to function as a way of negotiating the complexities of a globalised, urbanised, technologised modernity. Hands proliferated in textual, visual, material, and symbolic form as markers of character, class, race, gender, and sexuality. Artists cast hands of the 'great and good' to capture their noble character, while eugenicists classified criminal and racial 'types' through fingerprints and measurements. From surgeons to factory 'hands', they embodied the morality of work, while charities offered a 'helping hand' to the needy. Our project uses history to stimulate dialogue about the place of emotional embodiment in our personal and social lives, revealing the hand's vital role as both a tool of objectification and an agent of self-empowerment. Our historical research aims to uncover how hands: shaped racial, gender, sexual, and class identities in an increasingly complex and globalised world; performed and symbolised labour and skill in an age of mechanisation; expressed emotion through touch, symbolising love and loss, sex and death; manifested care and compassion, professionally and philanthropically; complicated authenticity and deceit in a newly fluid and pluralistic society. Sharing our findings through ten workshops and a programme of co-produced creative practice, our objectives are to establish how: Victorian hands and haptic practice inform current understandings of embodied selfhood; acts of making and repairing shape personal and professional identities in the digital age; hands express creative impulses and promote wellbeing; people relate to their hands as they age; hands offer insights into the ways in which bodies can both communicate truth and deceive us. Our innovative methodology will provide new insights into the lived experience and dense symbolic meaning of the Victorian hand and its legacies. We will use our historical research to understand society's contemporary fascination with constructing identity and achieving fulfillment through the body, working with non-academic stakeholders to inform critical thinking about the present. We will disrupt stereotypes and gender biases around hands and craft, emotions and bodies, through reflection on 'different' hands (young and old, abled and disabled, and varied genders and ethnicities). We therefore address UKRI Strategic Objective Priority 5.1 to secure better health, ageing and wellbeing and three of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals: Good Health and Wellbeing; Achieve Gender Equality; and Reduced Inequalities. Our project will advance academic scholarship, promote wellbeing, and generate creative interventions that communicate the relevance of the arts and humanities, exciting popular interest among those intrigued by the Victorians and the role of the body in making us who we are.

NHS contributes substantially to the UK's carbon footprint, accounting for 4% of England's total carbon footprint. Operating theatres are shown to be three to six times more energy-intensive than the rest of the hospital and a major contributor of waste. The aim of this research is to identify possibilities for behaviour change in UK hospitals to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres practices. Recent research and pro-environmental initiatives have proposed practical guidelines to minimise environmental impact in operating theatres such as reduction of anaesthetic gas (e.g., using local anaesthetic instead of general anaesthetic), rationalising surgical instruments (e.g., streamlining surgical instrument trays) and opting for reusable products and equipment (e.g., reusable gowns and tools instead of disposable ones). However, many of the proposed solutions overlook the behavioural factors that are crucial in the implementation process. This is evidence in practice, where sustainability champions in UK hospitals report on slow adoption of these and similar green surgery guidelines. While surgeons and other theatre staff are aware and concerned about environmental waste and climate crisis, many report significant challenges in implementing pro-environmental behaviours in their practice, and there is a well-known gap between environmental intentions and pro-environmental behaviours of individuals. Therefore, understanding how theatre staff can be empowered to adopt green surgery procedures is critical for the net-zero transition of healthcare systems. In this project, we will work closely with surgeons, other theatre staff and the broader stakeholders at Imperial NHS Trust hospitals to identify the most important facilitators of and barriers to the adoption of green surgery principles and practices in operating theatres. With these insights, we will co-design interventions for behaviour change for the surgery pathway with the highest plausible environmental benefits, and that can help to close the gap between environmental intentions and pro-environmental behaviour in operating theatres. We will employ insights of environmental psychology, behavioural science and human-centred design principles to propose a package of interventions that will be used to facilitate the implementation of environmental guidelines in surgery.

When Darwin was developing his theories of evolution he read avidly in popular natural history magazines and sought out information from an army of almost 2000 correspondents. Such engagement with a wide public in the construction of science became increasingly difficult with the development of professional, and highly specialised science, but the emergence of 'citizen science' projects has suggested a new way forward. With the creation of vast data sets in contemporary science, there is a need for a new army of volunteers to help classify and analyse the information. The Zooniverse platform, started in 2007 with 'Galaxy Zoo', now has over 800,000 participants who contribute to projects from astrophysics to climate science. Significant discoveries have already been made by these volunteers in the field of astronomy. Yet, the structures by which these volunteers might engage with professional science, and through which scientists themselves might draw upon their findings, are not clear, and researchers on the project have been turning to nineteenth-century models of communication to find ways of harnessing this huge popular interest in order to increase the rate of scientific progress. The information revolution in our own age has parallels in the nineteenth century which saw an explosion of print, and journal publishing; in 1800 there were only around 100 science periodicals, but by 1900 this had jumped to 10,000 worldwide. The project brings together historical and literary research in the nineteenth century with contemporary scientific practice, looking at the ways in which patterns of popular communication and engagement in nineteenth-century science can offer models for current practice. The research is timely since the digital revolution, and open-access publishing, are about to change forever the processes and forms of scientific communication and exchange. The project will be based at the Universities of Oxford and Leicester, in partnership with three of our most significant institutions: the Natural History Museum; the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Royal Society. Researchers will draw on their historic collections, uncovering the extraordinary range of largely forgotten science journals of the nineteenth century, from the Magazine of Natural History (one of Darwin's favourites), to Recreative Science, or Hardwicke's Science Gossip: an Illustrated Medium of Interchange and Gossip for Students and Lovers of Nature. They will also work with these institutions' science communities, addressing questions about the creation and circulation of knowledge in the digital age, and looking at innovative ways of breaking through the public/professional divide. The Zooniverse will extend the range of its work, creating four new citizen science projects which will both accelerate the rate of scientific growth in these areas, and add an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 to the dedicated ranks of citizen scientists. Drawing on the historical research, it will also develop new tools to enable better systems of exchange between professional science, and this growing army of volunteers. As part of the project there will be public symposia in the Natural History Museum, the Royal Society and the Royal College of Surgeons, as well as an exhibition in the Hunterian Museum, and a performance lecture by Professor Marcus du Sautoy. Science has suffered in the public mind from its seeming aloofness and impenetrability. This partnership between humanities and science researchers aims to break down some of those barriers, and to create a truly productive public engagement with science which will enhance the ongoing development of scientific practice.

This proposal seeks support for Peters and Ryan to partner with the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) and Scalpel (the UK's largest undergraduate surgical society) to translate their previous ESRC-funded research into a package of Women in Surgery (WIS) interventions designed to boost women's motivation to embark on and succeed in a surgical career. This intervention is both timely and essential for the long-term wellbeing of the UK public. First, by increasing women's surgical career motivation the interventions promise to redress the systematic underrepresentation of women in surgery. While women now dominate UK medical schools they are far less likely than male colleagues to pursue a career in surgery and even less likely to qualify as consultants. Second, by encouraging the women who increasingly dominate the undergraduate talent pool to pursue and succeed in a surgical career, the interventions will ensure the UK public has access to the surgical skills that it requires. The UK is currently experiencing a shortage of surgeons and the rapidly aging population will exacerbate this problem. Third, by increasing women's motivation the interventions will reduce NHS costs associated with the high turnover of capable female trainees. The WIS interventions are a direct application of Peters and Ryan's recent research which revealed that identity-based processes account for women's lower levels of career motivation in high status occupations. Specifically, the research demonstrates that women are likely to perceive that they do not fit in with the stereotypically masculine image that defines high status occupations like surgery. Importantly, this perceived lack of identity fit reduces women's motivation to pursue the occupation in the first place; and amongst those who have already embarked on this occupation, it reduces their motivation to succeed and increases their inclination to 'opt-out'. We seek to apply these findings in a package of interventions designed and run in collaboration with the RCS and Scalpel. The interventions seek to target women's surgical career motivation using a three-ponged approach that consists of (a) a seminar series, (b) a platform of multimedia resources and (c) a programme of intervention evaluation. The WIS Seminar Series will target medical students and surgical trainees at top UK conferences to disseminate knowledge about the role of identity-fit dynamics in the motivation of women. The Seminar Series will also directly bolster women's perception of identity fit by increasing the visibility of female surgical role models who challenge perceptions that surgeons are, or need to be, only a particular kind of person. The interventions will be reinforced by ensuring the conference is a gender-sensitive environment where key organisations are given the opportunity to communicate their commitment to diversity. One key seminar will be presented at a medical educators conference and will focus on the dissemination of knowledge so that those who are best placed to monitor and manage the surgical career pipeline understand the issues and are empowered to institute their own interventions. To ensure that the dissemination and intervention components of the Seminar Series can be directed towards a national audience on an ongoing basis, the series will be complemented by a platform of multimedia resources including a WIS Vodcast, WIS Seminar Series Website and a WIS Support Network. Finally, an evaluation programme will accompany the interventions to document their effectiveness at increasing the motivation of seminar attendees (versus non-attendees), both immediately and in the months following the intervention. Where possible indicative behavioural information will be gathered. This will inform future seminars, ensure that the RCS and Scalpel implement best practise to increase the presence of women in surgery and to inform future research.

ExISE addresses Key Area 3 of the AHRC Antimicrobial Resistance Call, 'Creative, Collaborative and Disruptive Innovation, Experiments and Design in Indoor/Built Environments'. Its overarching Aim is to eliminate airborne acquired Surgical Site Infections (SSI) in operating theatres OTs, traditionally countered with antibiotics. Our microbiologist colleagues emphasise that any antibiotic use, suboptimal or optimal, creates AMR and so avoidance of antibiotic use, in this case post-operative, is paramount. ExISE proposes to achieve this aim through the evidence-based reinvention of the actual physical environment in which surgery is practised, the Operating Theatre OT. Eliminating airborne SSI will reduce the number of infections and the reactive use of antibiotics in recovery and recuperation and in some cases repeat surgery and renewed risk. Airborne transmission of infection has long been feared, the post war custom and practice position on its mechanisms has dominated OT design. SSI is not eliminated in contemporary OTs. The position is not wholly substantiated. Surgeons do not question OT design. Is there another way? ExISE will search for alternative approaches: its historians of science, art and architecture will research a history of Operating Theatre design, of making 'safe', appropriate environments for surgery within their designers' and patrons' theories and beliefs over some 150 years. The search will extend to exhuming still and moving images of surgery in action within its set environments. The Royal College of Surgeons believes this is an as yet unwritten history. The team will be searching for accompanying evidence for environmental intent to enable meaningful reconstructions of their theatres and environments against the original criteria for success. What did they think a healthy environment with healthy air looked like? ExISE scientists will assemble laboratory models and environments from the historical reconstructions of OTs alongside a contemporary 'Ultraclean' OT, the familiar 'cooker hood' issuing truly prodigious flows of cool air through the OT over all the occupants and contents, up to 40 air changes/hr, making a bizarre and not wholly welcome working environment for surgical teams. In parallel, ExISE will achieve greater understanding of the physical and psychological experience of being in/working in a contemporary OT for surgical teams and support staff by visiting teams and interviewing them in situ and at the Royal College. We hope to translate these insights into a meaningful critique from which design and redesign leads can be drawn, leading to a radical step change in fundamental approaches to the design of OTs. Approaches which appeal to our stakeholders and partners will be interrogated and tested physically with both analogue and theoretical models to enable wide dissemination of research outputs with real confidence and thence make significant impacts on the aspirations for and expectations of environments for surgery. Pursuing the international success of our earlier Robust Hospitals project film, we will make a 4-5minute animation out of our drawn reconstructions of OTs, our ideas for redesigning the OT superimposing the fluid flow modelling and calculated environmental performance. Our partners will post the film for their constituencies as will Cambridge University on its streaming media site and YouTube Much detailed and painstaking work will be required subsequently to implement such radically new OTs in practice but ExISE should achieve the 'great leap forward' that breaks more than 60 years of standard practice.