On the nature of research infrastructure, dead bodies, flies and synths

Last week, The Swedish Research Council announced funding for four national research infrastructures in which the Faculty of Arts and Humanities is a partner.

Three of these, HumInfra, SBDI and Språkbanken are continuations of established infrastructures. Humlab is involved in all of these, but the forth, ArchLab, is new will be led by the Environmental Archaeology Lab (MAL), here in our faculty.

But what does this all mean? And what are the implications for individual researchers and research groups? I will try to explain, using recent activities at MAL as an illustration.

Research infrastructures are designed to enable and support research, and do not in themselves conduct full-scale research projects; they essentially provide services to help others undertake their research. These services can vary immensely, from providing online tutorials and telephone support for initial ideas, to the programming and laboratory analyses which enable conclusions to be drawn.

The boundary between research and infrastructures is necessarily fuzzy: the act of undertaking analysis is in itself research, and research infrastructures are essential for developing new methods with which to advance the cutting edge of almost any field. A balance must be struck between supporting well established methods, such as pollen and plant macrofossil analysis, and pushing the envelope with new methods such as hyperspectral imaging and ancient DNA.

In real terms, research infrastructure funding allows us retain the staff, skills, instruments and space to ensure that these services are available as and when they are needed by the Swedish research community. They also reduce the cost for any project where the methods are required, by taking on the considerable investment costs which are outside the scope of any single project (especially with the level of funding available in the arts and humanities). They also make it easier for us to attract and host national and international guest researchers.

Time for a more specific, and hopefully amusing example.

The Environmental Archaeology Lab recently had the pleasure of hosting a Fulbright Scholar from the Department of Entomology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA. Michael Monzon is a forensic entomologist and graduate student, and came over to learn skills in archaeoentomology – the study of fossil insects in archaeological deposits.

As a research infrastructure (MAL is a local research infrastructure with international scope), we were able to offer him lab space, access to a microscope with a high-resolution camera, literature for identifying insects, and perhaps most importantly a community with the skills, knowledge and contacts to enable him to learn new methods and undertake research projects.

As a forensic entomologist, Mike has 'special' interests. He is not afraid of things that look and smell bad - even to our somewhat robust archaeological noses. As a laboratory we have more than the usual capacity to cope with such things, and a fume cupboard and freezer were especially useful. We drew the line, however, at keeping an open box of decaying animal parts in or near the lab. This 'meat-box' then, found its way into my garden, and I would periodically be visited by Mike when he sampled the insects attracted to it.

Mike is especially interested in flies (Diptera), as they are early stage colonisers of dead bodies and important in crime scene investigations (modern and archaeological), and his work will give us new knowledge that can be applied to forensics and archaeology in Northern Scandinavia. We also collected beetles to improve the scope of our insect reference collection at the lab, and Mike assisted us when teaching Masters students and trainees.

But where do the synths come in?

Well, we also monitored the meat-box with a wildlife camera. This was accidently left turned on during a workshop, when Mike was visited by his supervisor Lauren Weidner from Arizona State University. Unbeknownst to any of us, the camera was recording one minute video snapshots of our discussions, and in particular a couple of American forensic entomologists getting very excited about seeing Swedish flies for the first time.

A rhapsody of nerds, you might say? Indeed, and this inspired yours truly to engage in one of my own nerdy out-of-work activities, namely the composition and recording of electronic music.

Not too everybody's taste, perhaps, but I will let the indirect results of research infrastructure speak for themselves here 

Phil Buckland, Vice Dean

Läs tidigare inlägg på Fakultetsledningens blogg

Further information:

At the moment, Humfak is involved in five Swedish national infrastructures: Huminfra, InfraVis, SBDI, Spåkbanken (previously Swe-Clarin), Swedish National Infrastructure for Digital Archaeology (Swedigarch). These will be complemented from 2024 with ArchLab.