Friday 6 November 2026 3:00pm to 7:00pm
The Pitt Building Newton Room
Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RPWhat does it mean to call a reproductive outcome a “failure”? Who decides what counts as success or failure – and what happens when we look at reproduction from a different perspective?
About
Join us for the Cambridge Reproduction Forum as researchers and practitioners from across disciplines come together to challenge conventional understandings of reproductive failure.
From miscarriage and infertility to population decline, failed pollination and species survival, reproductive outcomes can acquire very different meanings depending on the biological, social, historical, clinical, demographic or environmental context.
This Forum will explore what might change if we stop taking reproductive failure as a fixed category and instead ask how it is defined, experienced and understood.
Confirmed speakers
We are delighted to welcome an interdisciplinary group of speakers, with more to follow!
- Professor Bassel Al Wattar – reproductive medicine and surgery
- Professor Sarah Franklin – reproductive sociology and reproductive technologies
- Professor Nick Hopwood – history of reproduction, embryology and medicine
- Professor Sarah Lloyd-Fox – child development, families and the perinatal period
- Professor Kathy Niakan – developmental biology and early human development
- Dr Rashmi Patel – mental health and perinatal psychiatry
- Professor Alice Reid – demography and population studies
- Rebecca Siddall – reproductive rights, media and reproductive justice
Together, they will bring perspectives spanning developmental biology, reproductive medicine, demography, history, sociology, psychology, mental health, reproductive rights and public health.
Panel 1: Who gets to define reproductive success and failure – and for what purpose?
This panel will question the category of “failure” itself. How are reproductive success and failure defined, measured and used across different contexts?
Drawing on perspectives including developmental biology, history of medicine, demography, population studies and the social and ethical dimensions of reproduction, the panel will explore who defines reproductive outcomes and why those definitions matter.
Flash talks: The emotional lives of reproduction
Hope, blame, responsibility and resilience across generations
How do reproductive experiences shape our emotional lives – as individuals, families and across generations?
These flash talks will explore where reproductive “failure” is located, who is expected to bear responsibility, and how experiences of loss, uncertainty, hope, stigma and resilience are lived and understood.
Bringing together perspectives from mental health, child development, public health and reproductive care, the session will consider both the immediate emotional consequences of reproductive experiences and the ways they can reverberate across lives and generations.
Panel 2: How can reproductive failure be reframed – or inhabited productively?
What happens when we stop assuming that reproductive failure can simply be eliminated or overcome?
This panel will consider how people, organisms, communities and societies live with reproductive failure, drawing on ideas of adaptation, persistence, survival and repair across human and non-human systems.
By viewing reproductive failure as part of longer-term processes of change, can we develop alternative ways of understanding reproductive experiences and outcomes?
Join us
This Forum is designed to bring together researchers, clinicians, students and others interested in reproduction from across disciplines.
Come and hear new perspectives, challenge established assumptions and join the conversation about how we understand reproductive success and failure.
Registration is free, but places are limited. Book your place now.