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Since September 2016 I have been working at King’s College London (KCL), in the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, the laboratory where is also based Abigail Woods, a specialist in the history of animal health and the veterinary profession in the United Kingdom. For a sociologist working on issues relating to antimicrobial resistance and, more particularly, to how veterinary use of antibiotics is regulated, it is extremely interesting to be in England right now. There are at least two reasons for this.The first reason, of which I was aware before I arrived and which was predominant in my wish to come to KCL, was that this is a prime destination for any social scientist working on animal health and the veterinary profession. Whilst elsewhere these areas of research have been left very much aside, British sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, historians and geographers have been doing exciting work on these issues for over a decade. It has to be said that since 2000 Britain has had the incredible “luck” of having to deal with two serious animal health crises – foot-and-mouth and bovine tuberculosis! As Laure Bonnaud and I pointed out in a recent article (https://www.cairn.info/revue-gouvernement-et-action-publique-2016-3-page-131.htm), above and beyond the obvious questions of funding which have allowed such works to develop, these crises were opportunities to think afresh about issues relating to the management of animal diseases and to construct objects of research which had until then been largely ignored. From this point of view it was clear to me that a stay in Britain would be very useful, given the dynamic surrounding these fields of research (even though – as I will discuss in future notes – my favoured approach, i.e. a sociology of the veterinary profession, has not been developed to any great extent over the other side of the Channel either).On the other hand, what I had not anticipated before coming to London and really beginning my research, was the British academic community’s current (and very recent) interest in the question of antimicrobial resistance, particularly in the field of social sciences. For just over a year or two, public authorities have been accompanying their antimicrobial resistance programme with a research funding policy which aims to encourage the development of works on the uses of antibiotics. The two leading bodies in social science research funding – the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) – and other organisations specialising more in health issues (such as the Wellcome Trust or the very recent Fleming Fund) have issued various calls and introduced funding tools specifically dedicated to works on antimicrobial resistance. A “Social science research champion” ((A researcher who has been given the task (and the required funding) of running a national research network on a given theme. In particular, this includes a role of coordination, the purpose of which is to get colleagues interested in the subject and to encourage them to become involved in project development)) has even been appointed to help structure the research community around these issues (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/social-community-medicine/projects/amr-champion/). So, I have no idea whether God really is saving the Queen … but the kingdom is definitely looking after antibiotics!So being in London at this time is allowing me to see how my colleagues are approaching a new subject, how numerous AMR Centres are being set up in universities and, in short, to be part of a bubbling scientific community that is showing an interest in a topic that until recently had left me feeling somewhat alone. Of course, one might regret the fact that certain aspects of the research are mainly (not to say exclusively) funded by contracts. And one might reasonably hypothesise that colleagues who are currently showing signs of interest by attending the various seminars and networking events on AMR will be less enthusiastic about this subject in a few years’ time. But on the other hand, it would be a mistake to see all this as just a passing fad or as a strictly policy-driven piece of research which will be of no use to science. When we consider the contribution that research on AIDS made to the sociology and anthropology of health in the 1990’s or, following the mad cow crisis, the impact of research into food safety on the development of the sociology of risk, we have legitimate cause to hope (and to try to ensure) that this infatuation with antibiotics will also play an important role in medical anthropology, in the sociology of medical and veterinary professions or in the analysis of healthcare policies, both human and animal ((It should nevertheless be noted that historians of medicine did not wait for the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria to study the history of antibiotics, which has for many years already been the subject of numerous works)).As for me, at my own modest level, British microbes are already beginning to give me a certain number of ideas, so at my own risk and peril I will definitely be taking a closer look at the situation…Translated from French by Christopher Hinton