Research Overview

Changing (In)Fertilities

Changing (In)Fertilities is a major new collaborative interdisciplinary research project funded by the Wellcome Trust and based in the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (ReproSoc) at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with Prof. Marcia C. Inhorn of Yale University. Changing (In)Fertilities is designed to be...

China Repro Tech

In recent years the development and use of assisted reproductive technologies have exploded in China. Since China's first IVF baby was born in 1988, over 350 treatment centres have opened, potentially offering services to the over 90 million estimated infertile individuals in the country today. In addition to IVF, prenatal...

Dish Life

Dish Life (Film & Game)

In 2016, our interdisciplinary collaboration between the Cambridge Department of Sociology and Stem Cell Institute produced Dish Life, a documentary short film which explores stem cell researchers’ affective relationship with their in vitro cells. Since then, the film has been in the official selection and won awards at...

Fertilisation Through a Looking Glass

IVF's recent historical present remains largely unanalysed. Professor Franklin is characterising the intersection of biological reproduction, technological agency, ethical frameworks, scientific knowledge and public culture, through which IVF has become an accepted and regular fact of life...

(In)Fertility, Education and Reproductive Health

Over the past decades most industrialized countries have undergone profound changes in family and fertility patterns. Marriage and first birth are consistently delayed to later ages, cohabitation and other alternative living arrangements to marriage are becoming increasingly common and there is a growing disconnection...

IVF Histories and Cultures Project

This collaborative research initiative began in 2005 as an investigation into the unique culture of mammalian developmental biology in the UK in the post war period, exploring its unusual focus on mammals, and asking why it was such a generative field of study – yielding many of the most important biomedical and...

Life in Translation

Life in Translation is a collaborative project led by Professor Sarah Franklin , Dr Noémie Merleau-Ponty and Karen Jent . The project explores from social scientific and ethnographic perspectives a contemporary emphasis in the biosciences on biomedical translation, and examines the varied interdisciplinary techniques and...

Life in Glass

Life in Glass is a series of cultural experiments that explore the relation between reproductive technologies and the social worlds we live in. Through art, film and creative dialogue, we consider how reproductive technologies come to play an ever larger role in the process of imagining when, how, if, and what we reproduce...

Men’s Attitudes to Intimate Life

Men's Attitudes to Intimate Life (MAIL) is a multi-site interview study of attitudes towards parenthood and child-free living among HIV-positive gay and bisexual men in London. Led by ReproSoc’s Research Associate Robert Pralat, the project seeks to find out how younger non-heterosexual men living with HIV approach their...

Nuclear Families

Nuclear Families: Understanding the experiences of the test veterans community project

Dr Mwenza Blell works on the Nuclear Families: Understanding the experiences of the test veterans community project, which is being delivered by the University of Southampton. The project aims to provide a contemporary approach to understand the lives of the families of British nuclear test veterans, exploring this group...

Reproducing the Environment

Reproducing the Environment is a collaborative project led by Katie Dow and Janelle Lamoreaux (University of Arizona). The project brings together scholars working on the diverse and important intersections between reproduction and the environment in many different parts of the world and in different species...

Reproduction and Climate Change in the UK

This MPhil research project is being conducted by Ben Gibson, under the supervision of Dr. Katie Dow. It investigates if and how 18-45 year olds in the UK are factoring environmental concerns into their reproductive decision-making. The project uses mixed quantitative and qualitative research methods, beginning with an...

The Reproductive Righteousness Project

The Reproductive Righteousness Project is a new initiative launched to explore the ways in which families, fertility and reproduction have become increasingly important discursive moral devices through which right wing populist leaders invoke the threat of national, social and cultural decline. From Trump’s “America first...

SurrogARTS

This research project focuses on surrogacy as an assisted reproduction technique (hence the short title ‘SurrogARTs’). It takes the case of transnational surrogacy carried out by European gay men in the US, as compared to American gay fathers. It looks at the motivations, relationships and experiences of European and...

Research Overview

Changing (In)Fertilities

China Repro Tech

Dish Life (Film & Game)

Fertilisation Through a Looking Glass

(In)Fertility, Education and Reproductive Health

IVF Histories and Cultures Project

Life in Translation

Life in Glass

Men’s Attitudes to Intimate Life

Nuclear Families: Understanding the experiences of the test veterans community project

Reproducing the Environment

Reproduction and Climate Change in the UK

The Reproductive Righteousness Project

SurrogARTS

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