In the framework of the official start of the DFG approved network
“Economies of Reproduction. Interdisciplinary Research on the Past and
Present of Human Reproduction 1750-2010” Professor Nick Hopwood will
give a public lecture titled "Human embryos, 1750–2010" at
Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin on May 7, 2010. Human embryos now rival
even genes as objects and subjects of hope and fear. This prominence in
biomedicine and the wider culture is recent, but depends on innovations
that go back to the end of the eighteenth century.
The lecture will offer a history from 1750 to the present. By
highlighting disciplinary identities, work practices, media of
communication and species politics, it will raise questions for
histories of reproduction over the last 250 years.
Nick Hopwood is senior lecturer at the Department of History and
Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge where he teaches history
of modern medicine and biology. It was only after his postdoctoral work
in developmental biology when he came to history of science and
medicine (MSc, London, 1992). Hopwood worked in the Cambridge HPS
Department and at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine
before the appointment to his present position in 1998.
The network
Today’s developments are characterized by ever closer entanglements
between the laboratory and the clinic, pharmaceutical business and
stock markets. Stem cells, embryos and gametes not only constitute
ethically contested research objects; they also figure centrally within
different moral, biological, social and commercial economies. The
network ?Economies of Reproduction“ will pursue research on the
historical and actual dimensions of human reproduction in the field of
life sciences (medicine and biology) and their relationship to
different but overlapping economies. 15 researchers from Germany,
Austria, Switzerland, the UK and the United States will put their
disciplinary backgrounds in the history of medicine and science, in
social sciences, anthropology, health sciences and philosophy in dialog
with each other. The joint intellectual aim of the network is to relate
the historical development of concepts of procreation and reproduction
to their specific political, historical and social contexts. The
interdisciplinary dialog will allow to identify research desiderata and
explore possible lines of research for a longue-durée-history of human
reproduction and its relations with economies.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Dr. Michi KnechtHumboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin
Institut für Europ?ische Ethnologie
Unter den Linden 6
10099 Berlin
P: 030 2093-4912
E: <a
href="mailto:michi.knecht@rz.hu-berlin.de">michi.knecht@rz.hu-berlin.de
<a
href="http://www.euroethno.hu-berlin.de/forschung/koop/verbuende/oekonomien_reproduktion">
www.euroethno.hu-berlin.de/forschung/koop/verbuende/oekonomien_reproduktion