Early Researchers Seminar Series 2022-23: seminar 1

Thursday 8 December 2022, 1pm - 2pm

Surrogacy, filiation, and the rethinking of legal parenthood: recent developments before the European Court of Human Rights
Marie-Hélène Peter-Spiess (Law)

Predictors and longitudinal trajectories of perinatal mental health in a rural area of The Gambia
Bosiljka Milosavljevic (Psychology)

Chair: Carleigh Morgan (MMLL)

Zoom meeting link

Please email Christina Rozeik to receive the Zoom meeting link for this year's seminars.

Speakers and abstracts

Surrogacy, filiation, and the rethinking of legal parenthood: recent developments before the European Court of Human Rights
Marie-Hélène Peter-Spiess (Law)

In many jurisdictions that prohibit surrogacy, intended parents having resorted to it face a myriad of legal barriers upon the child’s birth. In particular, these individuals often struggle to get legally recognized as parents, as a gap between their de facto and legal families is created. In this context, a number of cases featuring same-sex or different-sex couples as intended parents end up reaching courts at both national and international levels. This presentation looks into some of these cases, with a focus on recent developments in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. While genetic intended fathers of children born through surrogacy can, in most instances, have their filiation link recorded in the local civil registry without delay, this is mostly excluded for genetically unrelated fathers and intended mothers. For the latter, biology - i.e. having given birth - usually still takes precedence over genetics - i.e. the child having been conceived with their eggs - and over intention. This results in situations of inequality between intended parents, but also between different family forms. Against this background, the question arises as to whether legal parenthood should be rethought in some ways and, if applicable, to which extent in order to best accommodate today’s new reproductive options and family forms.

Marie-Hélène Peter-Spiess is a PhD researcher in law at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and works for its “Human Reproduction Reloaded” research centre. She is also an Adjunct Lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, the Reims campus, and is currently a visiting researcher at the Faculty of Law of the University of Cambridge. Prior to her doctoral studies, Marie-Hélène also worked as an attorney-at-law in Geneva, Switzerland

Predictors and longitudinal trajectories of perinatal mental health in a rural area of The Gambia
Bosiljka Milosavljevic (Psychology)

Abstract TBC. 

About Bosiljka Milosavljevic: I am currently a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Psychology at Cambridge and work on the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) project. BRIGHT is a prospective longitudinal study that has been following infants in The Gambia from the antenatal period to early childhood. The aim of this study is to establish brain function-for-age curves in these two settings and to explore the contribution of undernutrition and poverty-related factors to neurodevelopment. My focus within this study is to investigate the contribution of psychosocial factors, such as the caregiving environment and maternal wellbeing, on cognitive and neural development of children in The Gambia.

The Early Researchers Seminar Series (ERSS) is a platform for PhD Students and early career researchers (ECRs) at the University of Cambridge with research foci on reproduction to share and discuss their research with other academics from a range of disciplines also researching reproduction at the University. Seminars are held on Zoom on the third Thursday of every month, 1pm - 2pm. For more information please see the main ERSS page.