It will bring outstanding international scholars to Loughborough as Visiting Fellows for a series of events, including a high-profile Roundtable Summit on ‘Bodies and Technologies’ on 22 November.
Gestation is a universal but deeply varied experience. With complex concerns arising recently through the rollback of women’s rights, and gestational inequalities becoming more visible, there is growing innovation and rethinking around gender, kinship, reproduction, and care.
The Gestation Theme will bring together research from diverse fields including sports, health care, social sciences, politics, history and the arts, through a series of cross-disciplinary conversations on gestation and the ways in which life is generated and reproduced materially and symbolically.
The IAS will welcome four Visiting Fellows to Loughborough for the Roundtable Summit:
- Dr Isabela de Oliveira Dornelas, Postdoctoral Fellow in Department III, Artefacts, Action, Knowledge, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
- Professor Mary E. Fissell, Professor of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
- Professor Hideyasu Shimadzu, Professor of Data Science, Kitasato University, Kanagawa
- Professor Holly Thorpe, Professor of Sport and Gender, University of Waikato, Hamilton
The roundtable discussion, co-chaired by Dr Eleanor Morgan (School of Design and Creative Arts) and Dr Emma Pullen (School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences), will run from 1pm to 4.30pm at International House. Places can be booked here, and there is also the option to attend online.
Other events during the week will include:
- A conversation between Dr Victoria Browne, Senior Lecturer in Political Philosophy, and Dr Tamarin Norwood, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, on the possible roles of creativity and narrativity in making sense of early pregnancy endings and pregnancy/baby loss on 23rd November, 12pm – 1pm at International House
- A screening of artist Katharine Fry’s film, When I’m with you (2022), followed by a Q&A with the artist chaired by Dr Rachael Grew on 23rd November, 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm, at Stanley Evernden Studio, Martin Hall
- A Friends and Fellows Coffee Morning on 24th November, 10:30am – 12pm - all welcome.
Professor Marsha Meskimmon, Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, said: “We are delighted to welcome such a diverse and distinguished group of IAS Visiting Fellows to Loughborough to launch Gestation, this year’s IAS Annual Theme. With a topic that speaks to each and every one of us, our place in the world and our responsibilities for it, I know that this Theme will encourage an amazing range of discussion and debate.
“We warmly invite colleagues from across both campuses to participate in the launch events later this month.”