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Cyborg
Conception
Project

Cyborg Conception: technologized reproduction and posthuman families in literary and cultural imagination

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'Cyborg Conception: technologized reproduction and posthuman families in literary and cultural imagination' is an ongoing project intervening in the interdisciplinary field of the medical humanities by understanding the cultural mediation of assisted reproduction and donor conception for solo parents by choice.

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Book: Cyborg Conception: Cultural and Critical Responses to Solo Motherhood by Choice (Palgrave 2024)

 

Funders

  • 2023. Strategic Support Fund for STAG: Solo Parents Talk and Action Group

  • 2022-2023. Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network 

  • 2022-2023. Institutional Strategic Support Fund (ISSF) / Wellcome Trust - Translation 

  • 2020-2021. Institutional Strategic Support Fund (ISSF) / Wellcome Trust

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Awards

Ronald Tress Prize

Overview of the Cyborg Conception Project

Collaborations

This project has seen collaborative engagement with the Donor Conception Network, Bourn Hall Clinic, University College London, The Wellcome, Single Parents Rights UK, The Stork and I, Solo Parents by Choice UK, and individuals connected to the donor conception community including: Mel Johnson, Shalaka Kamerkar, Nancy Milligan, Genevieve Roberts, Rebecca Ward, Imogen Foxell, Ms Alice Smith, Suzy Buckley, Emma Ward, Ruth Talbot, Natasza Lentner, and Thanos Papathanasiou

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Click here to read the booklet 'Independent Family Planning: Choosing Solo Motherhood through Gamete Donation. A guide for fertility healthcare professionals' or click here to learn more about the booklet.

Published 

  • Halden, G., and H. King, 'Regulation needs to acknowledge that donor siblings connect before 18', PET: BioNews, 25 March

  •  ‘Is the export of donor sperm explained adequately to recipients?’, PET: BioNews, 15 Jan 2024. 

  • 'The relationship between solo parents and fertility clinics', PET: BioNews, 26 June 2023. The relationship between solo parents and fertility clinics • PET (progress.org.uk)

  • 'Independent Family Planning: Choosing Solo Motherhood through Gamete Donation. A guide for fertility healthcare professionals' (Wellcome, March 2023) 

  • 'Fatherlessness, sperm donors and ‘so what?’ parentage: arguing against the immorality of donor conception through ‘world literature’, Medical Humanities, 25 April 2022. doi: 10.1136/medhum-2021-012328 (part of the ISSF/Wellcome Cyborg Conception funded project)

  • ''Plan A''. Donor Conception Network Journal, 25 (2021), pp. 13-14

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Events

  • 2023. The Problem of Anonymity: A Film Showing of Offspring (2001) and a Discussion of Donor Anonymity in the Digital Age. 24 March 2023, 18:00 — 21:00. Venue: Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square, Cinema. 

  • ​2023. STAG: Solo-Parent Talk and Action Group. Community Café. Organised with Natasza Lentner (admin for the Facebook groups Solo Parents by Choice UK), Ruth Talbot (founder of Single Parent Rights), and Dr Suzy Buckley from UCL. 6th February 2023,  

  • 2022. 'Effecting Change: Café for Solo Parents by Choice', Being Human Festival, November. Co-organiser alongside Dr Harriet Barratt. 

Talks

  • ​2024 ‘10 Families & Counting: Time for Global Limits on Donor-Created (Half) Siblings?’ PET. May 22nd. 5.30-7.30pm (BST) on Zoom. 10 Families and Counting: Time for Global Limits on Donor-Created (Half-) Siblings? • PET. 

  • 2024 'Cyborg Conception: The Social Reality of One Parent Conception', Creating Children, Creating Parents. University of Nottingham. 29-30th April. 

  • 2023: 'Solo Mothers via Gamete Donation – Tackling Stigma and Prioritizing Lived-Experience', An Unwell World?
    Anthropology in a Speculative Mode, SOAS

  • 2023: 'Cyborg Conception', ISSF Celebration Event, Birkbeck College University of London, 29 March. 

  • 2022:  'Fatherlessness, sperm donors and ‘so what?’ parentage', Critical Creative Innovative Thinking at Aga Khan University, August 18. 

  • 2021: 'Barren Planets and the Ovum-like Death Star: Family, Fertility and Assisted Reproduction in Star Wars (1977-2019)', SFRA, June 21.

Book

Cyborg Conception: Cultural and Critical Responses to Solo Motherhood by Choice (Palgrave 2024)​

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This book considers the growing popularity of solo motherhood via gamete donation and how this type of “cyborg conception” is narrated in medicine, bioethics, fiction, and memoir. It identifies solo mothers as radical women who exist in a space beyond binarity (male/female dual-rearing dynamic) and heteronormative discourse; solo mothers represent, among other diverse family constructions (such as same-sex couples and throuples), a critical intervention in the dominant narrative of the nuclear family which defines the “ideal” reproductive model. This book combines memoir and scholarly research to present a deeply nuanced and rigorous overview of the solo motherhood phenomenon.

Membership

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2022: Fellow Royal Society for Public Health

 

2021: Professional membership: Donor Conception Network

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