Developing Humanitarian Medicine (DHM) is a five-year research project conducted by a group of interdisciplinary researchers based at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at The University of Manchester. The project considers the history of humanitarian medicine as a set of emergency interventions. It seeks to generate significant shifts in understanding humanitarian medicine’s scientific and organisational specificity and role in developing clinical norms, debating ‘rights-based’ approaches to health access, and leading campaigns for access to drugs while deploying bespoke biotechnological tools. The project’s case studies span from patient-centred clinical norms and concerns on care to experimental initiatives in humanitarian setting and state-led norm-setting diplomacy through emergency medical teams (EMTs) initiatives.

This history builds on longstanding collaborations with non-governmental organisation (NGO) partners, including Médecins Sans Frontières’s Centre de réflexion sur l’action et les savoirs humanitaires (CRASH) and UK-Med. Our research will inform humanitarian practice and contribute to ongoing debates on how humanitarian medical providers engage with pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to disseminate, repurpose, and research drugs and diagnostic tools. We place the use and preservation of historical records at the heart of humanitarian practices and hope to transform the way that researchers and practitioners deploy evidence from the very recent past. Our project, which is funded by the Wellcome Trust (226515/Z/22/Z), began in  September 2023 and will conclude in September 2028.