The future of reproductive research: an in-person networking event

Thursday 7 July 2022, 3pm - 7.30pm

Palmerston Room, Fisher Building, St John's College, Cambridge

We are delighted to announce an in-person networking event, to celebrate the first two years of the Early Researchers Seminar Series. The event is open to all researchers with an interest in reproduction, from any discipline, and at any level (postgraduate student to PI)!

To attend, please register on Eventbrite before 1 July 2022: https://repro-networking-2022.eventbrite.co.uk

Programme

Introduction
Professor Kathy Niakan (Chair, Cambridge Reproduction)

Flash talks from early career researchers

COVID-19 in the context of perinatal transitions: disparities in income in relation to mental health
Staci Meredith Weiss (Psychology)

Epigenetic inheritance of predisposition to obesity: through the oocyte?
António Galvão (Babraham Institute)

Making the “Magic Pill”: history, innovation and the first oral contraceptives
Kim Alexander (HPS)

Lineage specification in the early mammalian embryo: towards a single-molecule perspective
Stanley Strawbridge (Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute)

Keynote lecture: How molecular genetics shaped the first history of reproduction
Professor Nick Hopwood (History & Philosophy of Science)

Flash talks from early career researchers

Balanced gene dosage control rather than parental origin underpins genomic imprinting
Ariella Weinberg-Shukron (Genetics)

Power in place: the unexpected consequences of doula power mediation
Victoria Keenan (HPS/Social Anthropology)

Understanding the development of the human reproductive system through the lens of single-cell genomics
Valentina Lorenzi (Wellcome Sanger Insititute)

“No such simple understanding”: feminism, women’s health and sex education as an instrument of struggle in 1980s South Africa
Laura Richardson (History)

Production babies: gestational labour in Pixar’s fun factory 
Carleigh Morgan (Centre for Film and Screen, MMLL)

Careers discussion

Guest speakers: Amarpreet Kaur (University of Birmingham/ReproSoc), Helen Dolling (Centre for Family Research) and Amanda Sferruzzi-Perri (PDN)

The main programme will be followed by informal networking over food and drinks in the Fisher Building Foyer.

Keynote lecture

How molecular genetics shaped the first history of reproduction
Professor Nick Hopwood (History & Philosophy of Science)

Nick Hopwood is Professor of History of Science and Medicine in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, and a deputy chair of Cambridge Reproduction. He is, most recently, the author of Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud (Chicago, 2015), which won the Levinson Prize of the History of Science Society, and co-editor of Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day (Cambridge, 2018), which is available as a highly illustrated paperback. He has finished a history of human embryos and holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to write The Many Births of the Test-Tube Baby, a history of claims to IVF.

Nick Hopwood photo: EMBL/Kinga Lubowiecka