Archives, manuscripts and material culture in life, health and wellbeing research
Archives, manuscripts and material culture collections hold profound potential for advancing knowledge about life, health and wellbeing. This report examines how these collections are currently used in research, what barriers limit their potential and how they could be supported more effectively to enable new discoveries.
Report at a glance
This report was commissioned by Wellcome and produced by Human Economics and i2 Media Research. An Advisory Board of sector experts was convened to guide the report’s development. Wellcome staff provided strategic oversight.
- Strategic programme:
- What's inside:
- The report examines how archives, manuscripts and material culture are currently used in life, health and wellbeing research, identifying 15 recommendations to enhance methodological innovation and cross-disciplinary experimentation.
- Who this is for:
- Researchers and research teams, collections professionals and institutions, funders and infrastructure providers, policy actors and cultural agencies.
- Creative commons:
Archives, Manuscripts and Material Culture Collections (AMCs) include oral histories of illness and care, hospital records, family papers, protest ephemera, natural history specimens and digital traces of lived experience.
These collections exist in both analogue and digital forms, spanning personal papers, institutional records, visual and audio materials and physical artefacts from museums and other repositories. Collectively, they offer unique and often underexplored perspectives on how health is experienced, understood and structured across time and place.
Summary
This study’s purpose is to explore the role of archives, manuscripts and material culture in enabling discovery research into life, health and wellbeing.
The report shows ways that these collections can be better recognised, connected and supported as enablers of transformative new knowledge. This work is designed not only to inform strategy but also to spark ideas, raise the profile of innovative practice and encourage experimentation across the wider sector.
The study was conducted on the basis that archives, manuscripts and material culture collections already function as essential infrastructure for discovery research in life, health and wellbeing. These collections though are not optimally resourced, coordinated or governed which has led to barriers to their use and access.
The report presents an evidence-based assessment of how these collections:
are currently used
what their unrealised potential may be and
how funders, institutions and researchers might work together to enhance their value over the next decade
It maps the intellectual and institutional lineage of the ecosystem, situating present day practices within a longer history of disciplinary development and infrastructure change.
The emphasis throughout is on discovery research: research that advances fundamental understanding, poses new questions and reshapes knowledge in ways that are foundational for future enquiry.
Audiences and Use
Although commissioned by Wellcome, this report is intended to speak to a broad community of stakeholders. These include:
researchers and research teams working with or around relevant collections
collections professionals and institutions curating, preserving and enabling access
funders and infrastructure providers shaping national and international research agendas
policy actors and cultural agencies concerned with the health, equity and sustainability of the wider research ecosystem
The analysis and recommendations presented in the report are designed to inform strategic decision-making across these communities and to inspire new forms of experimentation and innovation.
Key findings
Breadth with untapped potential
Collections are extraordinarily diverse. They already support research that cuts across disciplines and geographies – but many remain underused. With greater coordination, visibility and support, their potential can be unlocked.
Conclusion
Archives, manuscripts and material culture collections are not only historical sources but foundational infrastructures for discovery research in life, health and wellbeing.
Collections-based research connects researchers, curators, technologists, and communities. It enables long-term inquiry, supports epistemic justice and drives methodological innovation.
Yet, to realise its full potential, this distributed and emergent ecosystem requires greater recognition, coordination, sustained investment and inclusive governance.
Recommendations
The study identifies 15 recommendations, offering potential points of entry for funders, institutions, researchers, communities and policymakers. These are organised into three complementary layers:
Field development recommendations (FDR): Small-scale, catalytic interventions that build early-stage capacity, participation and visibility across the ecosystem, especially for new or underrepresented participants.
Infrastructure and enabler recommendations (IER): Infrastructure, or practice interventions that address foundational constraints and strengthen the technical, organisational and ethical systems that enable discovery research.
Programme and policy recommendations (PPR): High-level, structural actions that reorient governance, investment, and research framing, embedding sustained investment and innovation across the ecosystem.
Together these categories provide a set of opportunities from immediate enabling steps to long-term systemic transformation, ensuring that collections can fully realise their potential as infrastructures for discovery research in life, health and wellbeing.
There is now a distinctive opportunity to act as a catalyst for discovery in this space:
strategic investment in collections-based research would strengthen the foundations of interdisciplinary health research across the humanities and social sciences
action across infrastructure, training, funding, and leadership can unlock long-term cultural, social and epistemic value
embedding equity and experimentation at the core of investment can advance the vision of a thriving, inclusive global research ecosystem
This report invites action across the ecosystem for:
researchers: to build new collaborations, share practices, and advocate for the value of collections
archivists and curators: to champion - and be championed for - the knowledge archives, manuscripts and material culture collections contain
institutions: to support collections as research infrastructure and recognise collaborative labour
funders: to coordinate across research and heritage portfolios and invest in long-term capacity and experimentation
The value isn’t just what the collection contains. It’s what it makes possible.
These systems are built for answers not questions. But what I need are better ways to wander – and find connections I didn’t know I was looking for.
The problem isn’t just what’s missing from the archive – it’s who’s missing from the research.