The Future of Human Reproduction: transformative agendas and methods for the Humanities and Social Sciences

New and emerging reproductive technologies have the potential, within a generation or two, to profoundly disrupt established social practices linked to human reproduction and parenting, as well as the concepts of relatedness and family.

Better understanding the cultural, ethical, legal, and social issues that this prospect raises is the principal substantive research aim of this programme. We will examine three such technologies.

Ectogenesis could allow us to develop fetuses wholly outside the body, to create children who have not been ‘born’ (in the usual sense of that term).

Genome editing will mean that future children can be ‘chosen’ or ‘designed’ with far greater levels of precision than at present.

New methods of creating eggs and sperm will enable the creation of children with two genetic parents of the same sex, or who have multiple genetic parents, or perhaps no determinate genetic parents at all.

Using these cases as focal points, we will develop transformative new research methods and modes of interdisciplinary working - for example, by integrating speculative design methodologies with those of bioethics, law, literature, linguistics, and psychology. Our ultimate aim is for this to lead to a novel research paradigm for the study of disruptive emerging technologies.