Dr Robert Pralat is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Sociology and a member of the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (ReproSoc). He studies how cultural changes and advances in medicine shape people’s views about parenthood, with a particular focus on sexual minorities and men living with HIV. Robert’s recent research also examines the role of desire in people’s engagement with medical technologies.
Robert is the Medical Sociology Subject Manager on the multi-disciplinary MPhil in Health, Medicine and Society. He is also actively involved in teaching on the Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS) Tripos, where he lectures on the sociology of gender (SOC10) and the sociology of health and illness (SOC13), and on the Psychological and Behavioural Sciences (PBS) Tripos, where he lectures on the sociology of the family (PBS8).
Robert has a BSc in Psychology and an MA in Gender Studies from the University of Leeds, and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge. Before moving to Cambridge in 2011, he worked for OPM, a London-based research organisation, and in the Centre for Sexual Health and HIV Research at University College London.
Key publications
Pralat R, Burns F, Anderson J and Barber TJ (2021) Can HIV-positive gay men become parents? How men living with HIV and HIV clinicians talk about the possibility of having children. Sociology of Health & Illness 43(2): 281–298.
Pralat R (2021) Sexual identities and reproductive orientations: Coming out as wanting (or not wanting) to have children. Sexualities 24(1–2): 276–294.
Pralat R (2020) Parenthood as intended: Reproductive responsibility, moral judgements and having children ‘by accident’. The Sociological Review 68(1): 161–176.
Pralat R (2018) More natural does not equal more normal: Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people’s views about different pathways to parenthood. Journal of Family Issues 39(18): 4179–4203.
Pralat R (2016) Between future families and families of origin: Talking about gay parenthood across generations. In: Pooley S and Qureshi K (eds) Parenthood Between Generations: Transforming Reproductive Cultures. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 43–64.
Pralat R (2015) Repro-sexual intersections: Sperm donation, HIV prevention and the public interest in semen. Reproductive Biomedicine Online 30(3): 211–219.
