Projects

Projects under the Wellcome strategic award

The main synthetic output of our Wellcome strategic award is Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day, a large, accessible, illustrated volume edited by Nick Hopwood, Rebecca Flemming and Lauren Kassell, and published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. It contains many chapters and 'exhibits' by group members and other scholars.

More specific research was organized within four strands. Use the links below to explore examples of our work. For more conferences and workshops, see past events.

1. Patients and practitioners

Patients and practitioners have long sought to promote fertility – and to control or restrict it. Projects in this strand explored how people seeking and offering help have framed the generative body.

• Rebecca Flemming, 'The invention of infertility in the classical Greek world: medicine, divinity and gender', Bulletin of the History of Medicine 87:4 (2013), 565–590.
• Rebecca Flemming, 'Wombs for the gods', and Fay Glinister, 'Ritual and meaning: contextualising votive terracotta infants in Hellenistic Italy', in Jane Draycott and Emma-Jayne Graham (eds), Bodies of Evidence: Ancient Anatomical Votives Past, Present and Future (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 112–130 and 131–146.
• Generation and Reproduction in Medieval Europe symposium (8 December 2012)
• Hilary Powell, 'The "miracle of childbirth": the portrayal of parturient women in medieval miracle narratives', Social History of Medicine 25:4 (2012), 795–811.
• Forman/Napier Casebooks project
• Lauren Kassell, 'Medical understandings of the body, c.1500–1750', in Kate Fisher and Sarah Toulalan (eds), The Routledge History of Sex and the Body in the West, 1500 to the Present (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 57–74.
• Lauren Kassell, 'Casebooks in early modern England: astrology, medicine and written records', Bulletin of the History of Medicine 88:4 (2014), 595–625.
• Leah Astbury and Elaine Leong, 'Women's medicine', in Amanda L. Capern (ed.), The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2019), in press.
• Siân Pooley, 'Parenthood, child-rearing and fertility in England, 1850–1914', History of the Family 18:1 (2013), 83–106.

2. Reproducing generations: conception and survival

Biological, anthropological and historical research has shown the variability of human fertility and the social diversity of reproduction. This strand evaluated historically the effects on reproductive rates of the health of conception and the fetus. We have been particularly interested in exposure to infection in cities with high disease loads and in social settings in which sex may have carried venereal diseases that impacted on reproduction.

• Understanding the early phase of the epidemiological transition: variations in infectious disease mortality in England 1600–1837
• Demography of early modern London circa 1550–1750
• E. A. Wrigley and R. M. Smith, 'Malthus and the Poor Law revisited', The Historical Journal (2019), in press.
• R.J. Davenport, 'Year of birth effects in the historical decline of tuberculosis: a reconsideration', PLoS ONE 8(12): e81797 (2013).
• Simon Szreter, 'The right of registration: development, identity registration and social security', History and Policy (2007)
• Keith Breckenridge and Simon Szreter (eds), Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), with editors' introduction, pp. 1–36, and chapters by Szreter, 'Registration of identities in early modern English parishes and amongst the English overseas', pp. 67–92, and Flemming, 'Identity registration in the classical Mediterranean world', pp. 169–190.
• Simon Szreter, 'The prevalence of syphilis in England and Wales on the eve of the Great War: revisiting the estimates of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases, 1913–1916', Social History of Medicine 27:3 (2014), 508–529.
• Sex, Disease and Fertility in History conference (28–30 September 2015)
• Simon Szreter (ed.), The Hidden Affliction: Sex, Disease and Infertility in History (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2019), in press, with editor's introduction, and Simon Szreter and Kevin Schurer, 'Revealing the hidden affliction: how much infertility was due to venereal disease in England and Wales on the eve of the Great War?'

3. Representation and communication

Generation and reproduction have been debated since antiquity, with much continuity in questions and huge changes in form. This strand worked to ground in basic practices of representation and communication a history that has tended to be written in terms of disembodied ideas.

• Karin Ekholm, 'Anatomy, bloodletting and emblems: interpreting the title-page of Nathaniel Highmore's Disquisitio (1651)', in Nicholas Jardine and Isla Fay (eds), Observing the World through Images: Diagrams and Figures in the Early-Modern Arts and Sciences (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 87–123.
• Jim Secord, Global Darwin lecture (Darwin College Lecture Series 2009)
• James A. Secord, Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
• Books and Babies: Communicating Reproduction exhibition (July–December 2011)
• Communicating Reproduction conference (5–6 December 2011)
• Making Visible Embryos online exhibition
• Nick Hopwood, 'A marble embryo: meanings of a portrait from 1900', History Workshop Journal 73 (Spring 2012), 5–36 [open access]; German translation: 'Der Embryologe und sein Homunkulus. Deutungen einer Marmorbüste von 1900', in Sybilla Nikolow (ed.), Erkenne Dich Selbst! Strategien der Sichtbarmachung des Körpers im 20. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015), pp. 144–78; short version: 'Anatomist and embryo: a portrait sculpture', The Lancet 381 (2013), 286–287.
• Nick Hopwood, 'The cult of amphioxus in German Darwinism; or, Our gelatinous ancestors in Naples' blue and balmy bay', History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 36:3 (2015), 371–393.
• Nick Hopwood, Haeckel's Embryos: Images, Evolution and Fraud (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). Summary: 'Copying pictures, evidencing evolution', Public Domain Review, 18 May 2016; 'Kreatives Kopieren: Ernst Haeckels Embryonenbilder', Lendemains: Études comparées sur la France 41, no. 162/3 (2016), 12–44; 'Reproduits et réinventés: les dessins d'embryons de Haeckel', Arts et savoirs 9 (2018).
• Nick Hopwood, Peter Murray Jones, Lauren Kassell and Jim Secord (eds), Communicating Reproduction, special issue, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 89:3 (2015), with editors' introduction, 379–404, and an article by Jones and Lea T. Olsan on 'Performative rituals for conception and childbirth in England, 900–1500', 406–433.
• Salim Al-Gailani, 'The "ice age" of anatomy and obstetrics: hand and eye in the promotion of frozen sections around 1900', Bulletin of the History of Medicine 90:4 (2016), 611–642.
• Reproduction on Film conference (23–25 September 2015)
• Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, Patrick Elis and Caitjan Gainty (eds), Reproduction on Film, special issue, British Journal for the History of Science 50:3 (2017), with editors' introduction, 'A machine for recreating life', 383–409, and articles by Salim Al-Gailani, '"Drawing aside the curtain": natural childbirth on screen in 1950s Britain', 473–493, and Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, 'Thin blue lines: product placement and the drama of pregnancy testing in British cinema and television', 495–520.
• Jesse Olszynko-Gryn and Patrick Ellis, 'Malthus at the movies: science, cinema, and activism around Z.P.G. and Soylent Green', Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 58:1 (2018), 47–69.

4. Twentieth-century transformations: technologies, experiences, regulation

How, and to what extent, did science transform reproduction in the twentieth century? Projects in this strand look at how new technologies were developed and how they changed the experience of reproduction. We are also studying new forms of regulation, such as for embryo research.

• Salim Al-Gailani, 'Pregnancy, pathology and public morals: making antenatal care in early twentieth-century Edinburgh', in Janet Greenlees and Linda Bryder (eds), Western Maternity and Medicine, 1880–1990 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013), pp. 31–46.
• Transforming Pregnancy Since 1900 conference (29–30 March 2012)
• Salim Al-Gailani and Angela Davis (eds), Transforming Pregnancy since 1900, special issue, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 47, Part B (2014), with editors' introduction, 229–232, Salim Al-Gailani, 'Making birth defects "preventable": pre-conceptional vitamin supplements and the politics of risk reduction', 278–289, and Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, 'The demand for pregnancy testing: the Aschheim–Zondek reaction, diagnostic versatility, and laboratory services in 1930s Britain', 233–247.
• Salim Al-Gailani, '"Antenatal affairs": maternal marking and the medical management of pregnancy in Britain around 1900', in Urte Helduser and Burkhard Dohm (eds), Imaginationen des Ungeborenen/Imaginations of the Unborn (Heidelberg: Winter, 2018), pp. 153–172.
• Salim Al-Gailani, '"The mothers of England object": public health, privacy and professional ethics in the early twentieth-century debate over the notification of pregnancy', Social History of Medicine, in press.
• Salim Al-Gailani, Mothers and Monsters: Pregnancy in Britain since 1900 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2019), in press.
• Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, 'The feminist appropriation of pregnancy testing in 1970s Britain', Women's History Review, in press.
• Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, 'Laparoscopy as a technology of population control: a use-­centered history of surgical sterilisation', in Heinrich Hartmann and Corinna R. Unger (eds), A World of Populations: The Production, Transfer, and Application of Demographic Knowledge in the Twentieth Century in Transnational Perspective (New York: Berghahn, 2014), pp. 147–177.
• Jesse Olszynko-Gryn and Caroline Rusterholz (eds), Reproductive Politics in Twentieth-Century France and Britain, special issue, Medical History 63:2 (2019).
• Reproduction and the Sciences in Cambridge workshop (8 April 2011)
• Debating Reproduction: Hospital Birth (1 November 2012)
• Making Human Heredity: Populations and Public Health in the Postwar Era workshop (28–30 June 2012)
• M.H. Johnson, 'The early history of evidence-based reproductive medicine', Reproductive BioMedicine Online, 26 (2013), 201–209.
• John Forrester, Principal Investigator, discusses his work on Robert Stoller and the history of gender identity.

Research on the history of IVF

• Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2010 for Robert Edwards, IVF pioneer. Martin Johnson, Professor Edwards' former student, gave a lecture on 'Bob Edwards and IVF: The early days' at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Watch the video here.
• M.H. Johnson, 'Robert Edwards: the path to IVF', Reproductive BioMedicine Online 23 (2011), 245–262.
• M.H. Johnson, S.B. Franklin, M. Cottingham and N. Hopwood, 'Why the Medical Research Council refused Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe support for research on human conception in 1971', Human Reproduction 25 (2010), 2157–2174.
• M.H. Johnson, 'The biology of donation', in John Appleby, Guido Pennings and Martin Richards (eds), Reproductive Donation: Bioethics, Policy and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 13–29.
• M.H. Johnson, 'Robert G. Edwards and the thorny path to the birth of Louise Brown: a history of in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer', in David K. Gardner, Ariel Weissman, Colin M. Howles and Zeev Shoham (eds), Textbook of Assisted Reproductive Techniques. Volume 1: Laboratory Perspectives, 5th edition (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2017), pp. xxv–xli.
• M.H. Johnson, 'In vitro fertilization', in Stanley Maloy and Kelly Hughes (eds), Brenner's Encyclopedia of Genetics, vol. 4 (New York: Elsevier, 2013), pp. 44–45.
• Martin H. Johnson, 'Professional hostility confronting Edwards, Steptoe and Purdy in their pioneering work on in-vitro fertilization', in Gabor Kovacs, Peter Brinsden and Alan DeCherney (eds), In-Vitro Fertilization: The Pioneers' History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 37–45.
• R.L. Gardner and M.H. Johnson, 'Bob Edwards and the first decade of Reproductive BioMedicine Online', Reproductive BioMedicine Online 22 (2011), 103–121.
• A.A. Theodosiou and M.H. Johnson, 'The politics of human embryo research and the motivation to achieve PGD (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis)', Reproductive BioMedicine Online 22 (2011), 457–471.
• Symposium: 'The History of the First IVF Births':
  • Kay Elder and Martin H. Johnson, 'The Oldham Notebooks: an analysis of the development of IVF 1969–1978. I. Introduction, materials and methods', Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online 1:1 (June 2015), 3–8.
  • Kay Elder and Martin H. Johnson, 'The Oldham Notebooks: an analysis of the development of IVF 1969–1978. II. The treatment cycles and their outcomes', Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online 1:1 (June 2015), 9–18.
  • Kay Elder and Martin H. Johnson, 'The Oldham Notebooks: an analysis of the development of IVF 1969–1978. III. Variations in procedures', Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online 1:1 (June 2015), 19–33.
  • Martin H. Johnson and Kay Elder, 'The Oldham Notebooks: an analysis of the development of IVF 1969–1978. IV. Ethical aspects', Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online 1:1 (June 2015), 34–45.
  • Martin H. Johnson and Kay Elder, 'The Oldham Notebooks: an analysis of the development of IVF 1969–1978. V. The role of Jean Purdy reassessed', Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online 1:1 (June 2015), 46–57.
  • Martin H. Johnson and Kay Elder, 'The Oldham Notebooks: an analysis of the development of IVF 1969–1978. VI. Sources of support and patterns of expenditure', Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online 1:1 (June 2015), 58–70.