Outreach Funding win for Routes of Infection / Routes to Safety Project

The Routes of Infection/ Routes to Safety project by researchers from the University of Southampton and University of Newcastle has just been awarded a University of Southampton Public Engagement Research Unit Award from the FELS Faculty Engagement Fund, and a National Biofilm Innovation Centre Public Engagement and Outreach Funding Award following their work in 2021.

In January 2021, the team were granted funding from UK Research and Innovation via the Arts and Humanities Research Council for an interdisciplinary examination into infection prevention for the bus service and service users. The research culminated in a report , and a series of short films which promoted infection prevention of the bus through ventilation, space, mask wearing, and disinfecting between use.

The funding from the award will be used to develop visual materials from the Routes of Infection / Routes to Safety project, and a new creative public engagement activity (the term ‘micro-pet’ referring to the communities of microbes that form in and on our bodies, as well as on external surfaces such as bus seats, flooring and handles, etc.). Through a series of workshops bus service drivers and users will be asked to imagine who and what microbial communities (Micro-Passengers) are and co-produce an interactive artwork for wider publics to encounter at events and online.

Click here to view the Routes of Infection / Routes to Safety film series

The research grew as a development of the highly-successful NAMRIP pump-priming study ‘‘Mapping Microbes’, and NAMRIP’s founder, Professor Leighton, was very pleased to write in support of the investigatory team (Drs. Emma Roe, Sandra Wilks and Paul Hurley from Southampton, and Dr Charlotte Veal from Newcastle University (formerly from Southampton) regarding the research bid ‘Routes of infection, routes to safety: Creative mapping of human-viral behaviours on the bus to understand infection prevention practices’ . Drs Roe and Veal had accompanied Professor Leighton to Uganda in 2019 for the Global-NAMRIP’s conference there, which included a showing of the film ‘In Our Hands ’ that was a key product of the initial Global-NAMRIP pump-priming study.