Through ethnography, discourse and conversation analysis, we explore how policies, interventions, technologies and ideologies of care travel around the world, are appropriated in different contexts, and play out on the ground.

Sexual and reproductive desires and behaviours are entangled with local norms, social relationships and (imposed) moralities. Studying the social lives of technologies allows us to explore how their uses and effects change as they diffuse and the kinds of relationships and subjectivities they make possible. Examining the mobility of health care providers and clients/patients allows us to explore how politics and moralities shape provider-client interactions, decision-making and medical ethics. While reproductive justice, stratified reproduction (how for example class, sexuality, ethnicity and illegalized migration lead to unequal reproductive opportunities), obstetric racism and (sexual) violence are recurrent themes, we also explore how social actors navigate unequal reproductive landscapes and resist, accept and appropriate biomedical knowledge and technologies for their own ends.

Through in-depth ethnographic research, we seek insights that can inform the development of health systems, policies and interventions more attuned to local realities and concerns. We are especially interested in issues such as infertility and reproductive loss often neglected in mainstream sexual and reproductive health and rights programs, and apply our anthropological knowledge to further both fundamental and applied research.

Affiliated researchers