Grace Halden Research

Research AREAS

Technology and Reproduction / Bioscience and Assisted Reproduction in the Medical Humanities. Special focus on donor conception.

Fertility/Infertility Policy, Impact and Activism

This research started in October 2020 through the ISSF/Wellcome funded project ‘Cyborg Conception’. This project questioned how far does the technologizing of reproduction shape posthuman discourses in contemporary literature and culture and, conversely, in what ways are new family formations made possible by the literary and cultural imagination as much as by assisted reproductive technologies?

This project explores how assisted reproduction is narrativized in contemporary culture and how the technologizing of reproduction has shaped posthuman discourse since the first successful human IVF pregnancy in 1978. This project saw the completion of two journal articles on solo motherhood by choice.

Broadly, my research into assisted reproduction involves three main areas. The first concerns how fertility is articulated to children and young people; for example, the educational importance for public understandings of fertility health and the social and emotional wellbeing of children conceived through technological intervention. The second genre is life writing; an important strand is graphic novels which finds a natural companion in infographics used by medical professionals and businesses to convey complex fertility issues/options to patients. The third is how fiction after 1978 perpetuates or helps demystify ethical anxieties surrounding donor conception.

In 2022, I was awarded a second ISSF/Wellcome grant to produce a booklet for fertility clinics across the UK on solo motherhood by choice. From 2023 to present the Birkbeck Centre for Medical Humanities has funded the STAG: Solo Parent Talk and Action Group.

Publications see:

Cyborg Conception: Cultural and Critical Responses to Solo Motherhood by Choice (Palgrave: 2024) available here at Springer and here on Amazon. Review copies can be ordered here.
'Independent Family Planning: Choosing Solo Motherhood through Gamete Donation. A guide for fertility healthcare professionals' (Wellcome, March 2023) - booklet
'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 https://www.dcnetwork.org/sites/dcnetwork.org/files/DCN%20Journal%2025%20Winter%202021.pdf

I write journalism regarding issues within the donor conception industry and work with industry on policy change. I currently hold an IFRC Wellcome grant for the project 'Impact of Fertility Treatment on Birkbeck Staff: Birkbeck Policy Implications' which

explores how fertility treatment impacts staff wellbeing, mental health, and work/life balance at Birkbeck, aiming to shape supportive workplace policies that address growing fertility-related challenges.

Through my research, I actively work to increase public understanding of assisted reproduction and donor conception through my public-facing engagement initiatives. I co-lead STAG (Solo Parent Talk and Action Group), a pioneering research network hosting public engagement events that attract national and international audiences (up to 200 attendees). Beyond academia, I disseminate research through industry reports, policy consultations, and media engagement. My work influenced UK fertility regulation via ‘Our Say: Pre-18 Contact with Donor Siblings’, co-authored for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s (HFEA) consultation on law reform. I also published Independent Family Planning, a Wellcome-funded industry-facing resource distributed to UK fertility clinics, charities, and policymakers. My media contributions include quotes in The Guardian and Huck Magazine on donor conception ethics. I serve as an advisor to industry (Kin Donor Bank), health practitioners (St George’s Hospital), and other stakeholders (the Donor Conception Network), shaping ethical policy and public education. Through these engagements, I bridge academic research, industry practice, and public policy for meaningful impact.

Publications see:

Halden, G., and H. King, 'Regulation needs to acknowledge that donor siblings connect before 18', PET: BioNews, 25 March 2024. Regulation needs to acknowledge that donor siblings connect before 18 (progress.org.uk)
‘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, 15 January 2024.Is the export of donor sperm explained adequately to recipients? (progress.org.uk)
King, H., Johnson, M., Halden, G., Lentner, N., Smyth, U., Walker, J., 'Our Say: Pre 18 Contact with Donor Siblings', Donor Sibling Connections UK (2023).
'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)

War/Genocide/Apocalypse

I have conducted research into the development of nuclear technology in the 20th Century. Alongside examining how nuclear weaponry significantly impacted 20th Century life, I have also researched nuclear power itself. As a cultural historian, I have investigated how society (mostly focused on UK, America, Japan, and Russia etc) has reacted to nuclear developments and have spoken at length about nuclear 'ambivalence' during the Cold War years. I have conducted a great deal of research on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and accidents including Windscale, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island.

Publications see:

Three Mile Island: The Meltdown Crisis and Nuclear Power in American Popular Culture (Routledge, 2017). Flyer here . Order here: Amazon.com , Amazon.co.uk
'We All Fall Down: Nuclear Families and Post-Nuclear Worlds', Berlinale Film Festival (2022)
Concerning Evil, ed. by Grace Halden and Gabriela Madlo (Oxford: IDP, 2013).

Human Condition, Posthuman, Digital Spaces, and AGI

I have explored ideas of the human condition from early Greek philosophy up to Hannah Arendt's definition of the Human Condition to concepts of the Cyborg, Transhuman and Posthuman. From how we will define the human legally in the future, to ideas of immortality, I've published and lectured on a wide range of issues surrounding the pivotal question 'what does it mean to be human?' Specifically, I examine how the human condition has been affected by technological developments. I am not only interested in evolving human infrastructure but also in how global and networked communities complicate and recalibrate ideas of geography, nation, and identity. By examining the ambition in transhumanist thought for mind-uploading into advanced ‘shells’, I also work on disability studies and body dissociation through mind ‘ascension’ and disembodied existence. Reflecting on Arendt’s claim that to migrate from the planet and physical experience would rewire the human condition, I think through the complex issues of identity, exile, dispersal, and digital migrancy that emerge from reducing self and community to data.

Publications see:

'British Science Fiction 1990s-2010: Technology and Society', Blackwell/Wiley Encyclopedia of Contemporary British and Irish Literature, ed. by Richard Bradford (Blackwell/Wiley, 2020)
'Cyberpunk Photography and Art', The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture, ed. by Graham J. Murphy et al (Routledge, 2019)
‘Growing up in the 21st Century: Pretty Little Liars and their Pretty Little Devices’, in Girl Talk: The Influence of Girls’ Series Books on American Popular Culture, ed. by LuElla D’Amico (New York: Lexington Books, 2016).