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ReproSoc

Reproductive Sociology Research Group
 

Biography

I have been an affiliated lecturer at ReproSoc since 2022, having joined the group as a research associate in 2014 and assuming the role as senior research associate in 2020. From 2018 to 2022 I worked as a coordinator of the LGBTQ Work Package on ReproSoc's collaborative grant Changing (In)Fertilities, funded by the Wellcome Trust and headed by Prof. Sarah Franklin (Cambridge) and Prof. Marcia Inhorn (Yale). Within that grant about changing fertility behaviours and perceptions, between 2020 and 2022, I conducted a study of gay men's use of altruistic surrogacy in the UK and compensated surrogacy overseas. And back in 2014, I first joined ReproSoc with my Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship from the European Commission. It included ethnographic research on European and American gay men's use of surrogacy in the US, where I worked at UC Berkeley with Prof. Charis Thompson (2014-2016).

Since February 2023, I have also held a part-time position as a postdoc researcher at Queen Mary University of London, working with Dr Manuela Perrotta on a Wellcome Trust funded project 'Remaking the Human Body'. Since 2011, I have developed close collaboration with AFIN research group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, led by Prof. Diana Marre.

Throughout my research career to date, I have conducted qualitative and ethnographic research with gay men who create families through surrogacy and adoption in the UK, US and Spain. I have worked from the perspectives of the sociology and anthropology of reproduction, queer kinships, queer reproductive justice, as well as race and whiteness studies.

In 2018, I co-edited, with Prof. Charis Thompson (UC Berkeley), a volume of Reproductive BioMedicine and Society Online, 'Making Families: Transnational Surrogacy, Queer Kinship and Reproductive Justice,' where we argued for reading queer kinships from the perspective of stratified reproduction and reproductive justice. I have also published, with Prof. France Winddance Twine, on the politics of race underpinning queer reproduction. Currently, I am writing up an ethnography of domestic and transnational gay surrogacy in the US, Transatlantic Transactions: Gay Men, Surrogacy and Queer Reproductive Justice.

Prior to my postdoc research, in my PhD dissertation (University of Barcelona, 2011) I looked at the social inclusion of families created through transnational adoption and surrogacy by gay men in Spain.  

In 2021-2022, I co-convened the interdisciplinary research network Global Conversations Towards Queer Social Justice, with Dr Hakan Sandal-Wilson (London School of Economics) and Dr Natasha Tanna (University of York), and with the support of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and lgbtQ+@cam. In this work, we built on the conference 'Queering Authoritarianisms: Conflict, Resistance and Coloniality' we co-convened in 2021. Within this research network, I also drew on my earlier work on queer resistance to homophobic nationalisms, which I began as an undergrad student at the Jagiellonian University's Sociology Department in my native Kraków (Poland). I continue this work within the Reproductive Righteousness project in ReproSoc.

My recent projects also include work on updating ethnographic research methodologies, which I have been developing in collaboration with Dr Corinna Guerzoni (University of Bologna), based on a workshop grant we received from Wenner-Gren Foundation: 'Changing Repro-Ethnographies: Mobility and Translation in the Anthropology of Reproduction' (2022-2023).

My interests also turn towards multi-species reproductive justice, which includes relationships between species in human and nonhuman reproduction, queer ecologies and critical animal studies. 

At Cambridge, I have been supervising and co-supervising PhD, MPhil and undergraduate dissertations in the Sociology Department, the Centre for Gender Studies, and the Health, Medicine and Society programme, on reproductive technologies, reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ families and queer kinships, the politics of sexuality and race, and species and veganism. I have taught on the Sociology of Gender (Soc 10), Sociology of Health and Illness (Soc 13), Concepts and Arguments in Sociology (Soc 4), as well as Cambridge Reproduction Summer School. 

Since 2016, I have been running an online community forum called Surrogacy Researchers, which I set up in order to gather together people doing surrogacy research across the globe. It currently includes 125 scholars from all over the world and it provides a forum for ongoing discussion and exchange. If you do any research related to surrogacy, do join in!

Publications

Key publications: 

De Zordo, Silvia; Marre, Diana and Smietana, Marcin. 2022. ‘Demographic anxieties in the age of ‘fertility decline’’. Medical Anthropology, Vol. 41, issues 6-7; https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2022.2099851

Smietana, Marcin and Twine, France Winddance. 2022. Queer decisions: Racial matchingand stigma management among gay male intended parentsInternational Journal of Comparative Sociology: 1-21; https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152221102837 (open access) 

Twine, France Winddance and Smietana, Marcin. 2021. The Racial Contours of Queer Reproduction. In: Sallie Han and Cecília Tomori (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Reproduction, pp. 285-304. Routledge.

Smietana, Marcin; Rudrappa, Sharmila and Weis, Christina. 2021. Moral frameworks of commercial surrogacy within the US, India and RussiaSexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 29(1): 1-17. DOI: 10.1080/26410397.2021.1878674.

Smietana, Marcin. 2019. Procreative consciousness in a global market: Gay men’s paths to surrogacy in the USReproductive BioMedicine & Society Online, vol. 7 (Nov. 2018): 101-111. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rbms.2019.03.001

Smietana, Marcin; Thompson, Charis and Twine, France Winddance. 2018. Making and breaking families: Reading queer reproductions, stratified reproduction and reproductive justice togetherReproductive Biomedicine & Society Online, vol. 7 (November): pp. 112-130. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rbms.2018.11.001

Smietana, Marcin and Thompson, Charis (eds.) 2018. Making Families: Transnational Surrogacy, Queer Kinship, and Reproductive Justice. Special Issue of Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online, vol. 7 (November): 1-160.

Smietana, Marcin. 2018. «Mes pères d’intention et moi sommes amis sur Facebook» : comment des femmes porteuses et des pères gais gèrent les tensions entre don et échange marchand aux États-Unis. In: Isabel Côté, Kévin Lavoie & Jérôme Courduriès (eds.) Perspectives internationales sur la gestation pour autrui: Expériences des personnes concernées et contextes d’action, pp. 225-247. Presses de l’Université du Québec.

Smietana, Marcin. 2017. Affective de-commodifying, economic de-kinning: Surrogates’ and gay fathers’ narratives in U.S. surrogacy. In: Charlotte Faircloth and Zeynep Gurtin (eds.) Making Parents: Reproductive Technologies and Parenting Culture across Borders, Special Issue of Sociological Research Online 22(2), 6. DOI: 10.5153/sro.4312

Smietana, Marcin. 2016. ‘Families like we’d always known’? Spanish gay fathers’ normalization narratives in transnational surrogacy. In: Merete Lie and Nina Lykke (eds.) Assisted Reproduction across Borders: Feminist Perspectives on Normalizations, Disruptions and Transmissions, pp. 49-60. Routledge. 

Smietana, Marcin; Jennings, Sarah; Herbrand, Cathy and Golombok, Susan. 2014. Family relationships in gay father families. In: Tabitha Freeman, Susanna Graham, Fatemeh Ebtehaj and Martin Richards (eds.) Relatedness in Assisted Reproduction: Families, Origins and Identities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Smietana, Marcin. 2013. Las paternidades y maternidades en las familias de padres gays creadas por gestación subrogada. In: Joan Bestard, Carmen López and Diana Marre (eds.) Maternidades, procreación y crianza en transformación. Barcelona: Bellaterra. 

Smietana, Marcin. 2011. Matczyni ojcowie? Męskość i kobiecość w hiszpańskich rodzinach gejów. In: Ewelina Ciaputa and Katarzyna Wojnicka (eds.) Karuzela z Mężczyznami: Kategorie Męskości w Polskich Badaniach Społecznych, pp. 139-160. Kraków: Impuls. 

Slany, Krystyna; Kowalska, Beata; and Smietana, Marcin (eds.) 2005. Homoseksualizm: Perspektywa Interdyscyplinarna. Kraków: Nomos.

Smietana, Marcin. 2005a. Wizerunek publiczny homoseksualistów w Polsce. In: Slany, Krystyna; Kowalska, Beata; and Smietana, Marcin (eds.) 2005. Homoseksualizm: Perspektywa Interdyscyplinarna, pp. 265-280. Kraków: Nomos.

 

Blog Posts: 

‘Queering Authoritarianisms: A Queer Rethinking of Social Justice and Global Politics’ With Hakan Sandal-Wilson (March 2021).

'I Wouldn't Mind a Kid Playing Around the Kitchen Here' (November 2020).

'Houses, Children, Animals and the Planet' (June 2019).

'Queering Fertility?' (October 2017).

'Conceivable Futures' (March 2017).

 

Podcasts:

'Creating a Positive, Inclusive and Kind Research Culture'. By University of Cambridge Postdoc Academy, 10 Dec 2021.

Surrogacy and Reproductive Justice'. With Dr Sarojini Nadimpally (Sama New Delhi) and Dr Mindy Jane Roseman (Yale University), by Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 30 Nov 2021.

Other publications: 

Smietana, Marcin (2023). "LGBTQ+ parenthood through in vitro gametogenesis?" BioNews 1184: https://www.progress.org.uk/lgbtq-parenthood-through-in-vitro-gametogenesis/

Affiliated ReproSoc Lecturer

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