Dr Marcin Smietana

I am a research associate in the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (ReproSoc). Within ReproSoc’s Wellcome Trust funded collaborative grant ‘Changing In/Fertilities’ I coordinate the work package on the changing fertility behaviours and perceptions among LGBTQ+ people. My current research involves qualitative interviews with British gay men who have pursued altruistic surrogacy in the UK or compensated surrogacy overseas. This follows on from my previous EU funded study (based at UC Berkeley and Cambridge) on gay men who form families through transnational and domestic surrogacy in the US, as well as from my PhD on Spanish gay fathers through transnational adoption and surrogacy (University of Barcelona, and AFIN-Autonomus University of Barcelona). With Prof. Charis Thompson (LSE), I co-edited the special issue of Reproductive BioMedicine & Society Online (Nov. 2018) ‘Making Families: Transnational Surrogacy, Queer Kinship and Reproductive Justice,’ where the perspectives of queer reproductions are put into conversation with those of stratified reproduction and reproductive justice. Currently I am writing up a book on gay men’s reproductive decision-making and the thinkability of gay family projects in the context of transnational reproduction. In my research I have also been looking at queer resistance to nation-state reproductive projects, sparked by my early work in Poland. My upcoming projects turn towards relationships between species in human and nonhuman reproduction, queer ecologies and critical animal studies. Please see my full departmental profile and list of publications here.