The increasing global development and use of reproductive technologies have prompted reproductive scholars within the social sciences and humanities to raise questions regarding how family, kinship, race, gender, sexuality, and disabilities intersect. Such studies have focused not least on how the selection of gametes, children, and parents takes place during medical treatment. Overall, these studies have illustrated how reproductive technologies are always technologies of biopolitics, as they potentially reflect on the governing of both life and death. Meanwhile, compared to how reproductive technologies are seen to remake life, the technological remaking of death has yet to be granted the same amount of scholarly attention.

At this international conference, we want to recenter the focus of reproductive studies to explore how technologies remake death as it intersects with life. We hope to engage in a range of different cases regarding how life and death emerge and are understood, such as during the cryopreservation and storage of gametes, in studies of family planning, in the use of prenatal screening, and in technologies involved in miscarriages, fetal reduction, abortions, still births, births, neonatal care, and infant death. We thereby hope to unpack how death emerges in relation to technologies involved, how cells, fetal tissue, and bodies that are dead become managed, and how people live with deaths after they have terminated a pregnancy or experienced infant death. We hope to bring forward embodied stories of how technological remaking’s of life and death are experienced, unpacking these stories in relation to how reproductive inequalities and current local and global forms of reproductive and population politics unfold.

We invite contributions to think about and relate to questions such as the following:

• How does technology remake death and dying at the beginning of life?
• How are colonial pasts, as well as racialized and gendered perceptions of bodies, entangled in the use of technologies of life and death at the beginning of life?
• What bio- and necropolitical practices are involved in the population politics at stake globally regarding bodies that are enabled to either live or die?
• How does the cryopreservation of gametes relate to life and death, given that the suspension of life is enabled?
• How does technology shape experiences and politics regarding abortion globally?
• As medical staff, what is it like to work with technologies enabling life and death?
• How are abortion and fetal reduction experienced by pregnant persons?
• How are technologies entangled with affect or emotions during the process of making life and death?
• How do legal and medical technologies intersect as perceptions of quality of life are assessed in decisions on whether to allow someone to live or die?
• How are technologies used to manage the deaths of fetuses and infants in maternity wards and neonatal intensive care units until the burial or disposal of the body, and what norms of affect and grieving are implied?
• How do parents who have lost a child or terminated a pregnancy live with the remaking of death and dying through technologies?
• How can technologies of life and death at the beginning of life be theoretically conceptualized?
• What are the methodological challenges of studying technologies of life and death at the beginning of life?

Associate professor, Professors:  DKR 1,375 (EUR 182)  including VAT

Postdoc, Ph.D. students, scientific assistants: DKR 1,000,- (EUR 135) including VAT

BA and KA students DKR 440 (EUR 60)  incl. VAT (Dinner is not included)

Register here:
https://www.events.aau.dk/event/2023-technodeath-conference

You have the option of being added to the mailing list, so you will receive news and other information when they are ready.

Send an email to technodeathconference@ikl.aau.dk

Changes to the programmes may be made.
New program added 17th August

To view fill program, click here

Program: Reproductive Technologies and the Remaking of Life and Death

Thursday: 24th of August
08.30 – 09.00: Registration and coffee, A C Meyers Vænge 15
09.00 – 09.45: Welcome and introduction to the conference: Stine W. Adrian, Auditorium 1.008
09.45 – 11.15: Keynote 1. Professor Kate Reed: 'It’s just part of the job': exploring the role of care in perinatal post-mortem work, Auditorium 1.008:
11.15 – 11.45: Coffee break
11.45 – 13.00: Plenary debate: Abortion in turbulent times. Moderator: Janne R. Herrmann. Panelists: Laura L. Heinsen, Turid Hermansdottir, Turid Nolsøe, Auditorium 1.008
13.00 – 14.00: Lunch
14.00 –15.30: Panels: A1- room 2.1.042, B1 room 2.1.043, C1 room 2.1.083, D1 room 2.1.121
15.30 – 16.00: Coffee break
16.00 – 17.30: Keynote 2: Professor Monica Casper: Birthing Death: What Infant and Maternal Mortality Reveal About Social Inequality, Auditorium 1.008
17.30 – 18.30: Boat to the Copenhagen Admiral Hotel for the conference dinner
  
Friday: 25th of August
08.30 – 09.00: Coffee, A C Meyers Vænge 15
09.00 – 10.30: Keynote 4: Professor Chia-Ling Wu: Anticipatory Regimes of Fetal Reduction, Auditorium 1.008
10.30 – 10.45: Coffee
10.45 – 12.15: Panels: A2 room 2.1.042, B2 room 2.1.043, D2 room 2.1.121
12.15 – 13.00: Lunch
13.00 – 14.30: Panels: A3- room 2.1.042, B3 room 2.1.043, C3 room 2.1.083, D3 room 2.1.121
14.30 – 15.00: Coffee
15.00 – 16.00: Plenary Wrap-Up, Moderator: Nina Lykke: Panelists: Ayo Wahlberg and Charlotte Kroløkke, Auditorium 1.008
 
All coffee breaks will be outside the Auditorium
Lunch will be served in the cantina
 

Changes to the panels may be made.

Panel 1 A room 2.1.042, Globegangen
Self management and abortion technologies

Chair: Anna Sofie Bach

Carrie Purcell, Victoria Newton, Fiona Bloomer and Lesley Hoggart: Self-managed medication abortion supported via telemedicine: Experiences during Covid-19

Lynn Thomas: From North Carolina to Nairobi’s Ward 6: An abortion technology for saving and enabling lives

Noga Friedman: “Abortion would be seven thousand times harder for me”. Permanent contraception and reproductive citizenship

Panel 2 A room 2.1.042, Globegangen
Visualization technologies, law and abortion

Chair: Laura Louise Heinsen

Pam Lowe, Rebecca Blaylock, Patricia Lohr, Lesley Hoggart: Seeing the Scan: Fetal Images in Abortion Care

Tracy Weitz, Hillary Gyuras, Danielle Besette and Michelle McGowan: Ultrasound and Abortion: Technological  determinism and state control over the meaning of life/death

Alysaa Basmajian: Creating life by manufacturing a “heartbeat” with ultrasound technology

Panel 3 A room 2.1.042, Globegangen
Abortion, wombs and ethical and legal reflections

Chair: Aimee Middlemiss

Dunja Begovic and Elizabeth Chloe Romanis: Language and Abortion: Adressing the rethoric of ‘killing’ in debate, practice and policy

Mio Tamakoshi: The Techno-legal Environment of Multifetal Pregnancy Reduction: A comparative case study of Italy and Japan

Ji-Young Lee: Artificial Amnion and placenta technology (AAPT) and abortion: Confronting the “Death of the Fetus”

Aimee Middlemiss: In relation to the state: the biomedical administration of the boundaries of legal personhood and kinship in England

Panel 1 B, room 2.1.043, Globegangen
Ambiguous reproduction

Chair: Tine Ravn

Andie Thompson: “The fetus falls of a cliff”: Oxidative stress relations at the nexus of the placenta

Bryan Lim and Mette Kragh-Furbo: Catalysing life: Exploring the tension surrounding folate as a reproductive technology

Mianna Meskus: Modulating death: Knowledge at the intersection of reproduction and ageing

Tine Ravn: The Social, Legal, and Ethical Implications of Research Concerning Embryoids in Relation to Human Embryos

Panel 2 B, room 2.1.043, Globegangen
Care and grief after pregnancy loss and induced abortion

Chair: Li-wen Shih

Sofie Mørk, Dorthe Hvidtjørn, Søren Møller, Tine Brink Henriksen, Maja O’connor og George Bonanno: Grief trajectories after loss in pregnancy and during the neonatal period

Julia Böcker and Veronika Siegl: From hiding the foetus to seeing the baby. New norms and practices of “viewability” following pregnancy loss and induced abortion

Li-wen Shih: Rearticulation of “Hsiao-Chan” (miscarriage, lit.small birth): Taiwanese women’s situated knowledges of pregnancy, life and loss

Paula Martone and Anna Molas: Negotiating ‘viability’ of preterm infants on the ground: the experiences of parents and healthcare workers in Spain

Panel 3 B room 2.1.043, Globegangen
Care and grief after pregnancy loss and induced abortion

Chair: Laura Louise Heinsen

Dorthe Hvidtjørn, Natasia Hindsbak, Christina Prinds, Sofie Mørk and Joanne Cacciatore: Social and professional support after termination of pregnancy due to fetal anomaly

Dunja Begovic: The ethical challenges and implications of perinatal pallilative care

Laura Louise Heinsen, Camilla Bruheim and Stine W. Adrian: Orchestrating Moral Bearability in the Clinical Management of Second-trimester Selective Abortion

Erica Millar: Second/third trimester abortions at the intersection of life and death

Panel 1 C, room 2.1.083, Klimagangen
Biopolitics and life and death

Chair: Stine W Adrian

Karina Edouard: Suspending Death, Enabling Life: Situating Doula-care as a critical reproductive technology in black maternal health

M. Mena, Jallicia Jolly, Carolina Coimbra: Towards Black Reproductive Rights: Transnational Activisms and Strategies Among Black Birth Workers in Three Continents

Dr. Karla da Costa: "Obstetric Racism in Brazil: Knowing the Reality and Reflecting on the Consequences"

Bolette Blaagaard, Stine Adrian and Signe Nordsted: How Journalism Forgets: A case study of how practices of state issued and controlled IUDs to the Inuit population in Greenland were forgotten and then remembered in Danish Journalism

Panel 3 C, room 2.1.083, Klimagangen
Life/Death, viability and disaster

Chair: Yael H Dolev

Tsipy Ivry: Ruptured obstetrical technologies, resilien birth: Women’s stories of childbirth during the 11 March 2011 earthquake in Japan

Vladimir Ariza: Maling a “binomio”. An exploration of “humanitarian objects” and there incidence in the relationship between mothers and child in the “1000 dias” program in Puerto Carreno, Colombia

Kateryna Moskalenko; Legal Regulation of Posthumous Reproduction in Ukraine

Yael H Dolev and Zwi Triger: Posthumous Reproduction in Israel: the alliance between familism, pronatalism, bereavement, militarism and patriarchy

Panel 1 D, room 2.1.121, Klimagangen
Reproductive technologies of life and death and Islam

Chair: Mutlu Burcu

Tara Asgarilaleh: Assisted Reproduc􀆟ve Technologies in the Islamic Republic: Infertility, Inequality and
Masculinities in Iran

Jess Marie Newman: Subjectivizing Therapeutic Abortion between law, islam, and prenatal diagnosis

Mutlu Burcu: The ethico-politics of uterine transplantation in cisgender women fro deceased donors in Turkey 

Panel 2 D room 2.1.121, Klimagangen
Genetic selection and life and death

Chair: Ayo Wahlberg

Amarpreet Kaur: Reproductive technologies: The judge and jury of death before birth

Marie Hintnausová: Prospectives and non-prospective pregnancies: ontological effects of PND in Czech Republic

Jung Chen: Gendering the beginning of life: Taiwanese gay fathers’ decision-making on embryo sex-selection

Ayo Wahlberg: Selection and the normalization of “quality of life”

Panel 3 D, room 2.1.121, Klimagangen
Death during surrogacy and in the use of assisted reproductive technologies

Chair: Malene Tanderup

Orit Chorowicz Bar-Am: “Death during surrogacy and in the use of assisted reproductive technologies”

Malene Tanderup: Impact of the war in Ukraine ad the Covid 19 pandemic on transnational surrogacy- A qualitative study of Danish infertile couples experiences of being in “exile”.

Catarina Delaunay and Luis Gouveia: Mourning and bereavement outside the clinic: dealing with embryo loss and grief within assisted reproductive technologies

Manon Lefevre: From the laboratory to the cemetery: Ontologies of embryo life and death collide

The conference takes place from August 24 to 25, at Aalborg University Copenhagen, A.C. Meyers Vænge 15, 2450 KBH SV.

Aalborg University Copenhagen is located in the part of Copenhagen called Sydhavnen (South Harbour), right by the waterfront. 

We will be in the University buildings and use the same facilities as the students. However the students will probably not be there in August since the semester starts September 1st.

Form the cantina, where we will enjoy lunch, we have the most beautifull view of Sydhavnen, with lots of house boats, and other activities.

You can read more about the venue here

The conference use EasyChair as conference management system. Submission Guidelines are available here:

EASYCHAIR QUICKGUIDE

1. Go to the conference submission page: https://easychair.org/cfp/TecnoDeath2023

a) Existing users of EasyChair may login to EasyChair using their existing “user name” and “password” (e.g., if you have previously submitted an abstract for another conference using EasyChair). 

b) New users must sign up for an EasyChair account on the EasyChair website. 

 
2. When logged into EasyChair click on the ”New Submission” button in the top left corner.
 
3. Please fill in the mandatory information under ”Authors” for all authors of the paper/panel (please have the following information ready before you start the submission: name, email address, institutional affiliation of all authors).
 
4. Insert the title of your proposal.

5. Paste your proposal text into the online form (max.1800 words including references). 
 
6. Add ”Keywords” (minimum three keywords on separate lines). 

7. Choose topic.

8. If possible, please also upload abstract as a .pdf
 
Click on the ”Submit” button
(you can revise the abstract and author information etc. until the submission deadline).

Important notice:

Please note that acceptance notifications will be sent via EasyChair. Unfortunately, emails from EasyChair are often caught in spam filters so please make sure that you check your spam filter and change your email settings so that EasyChair emails are never blocked.

Hotel Scandic Sydhavnen is just a short walk from the Conference venue.
Link to Hotel Scandic Sydhavnen 

A bit further, but still in walking distance is Hotel Scandic Sluseholmen.
Link to Hotel Scandic Sluseholmen

If you prefer to stay close to the center of town, there are numerous of nice hotels close to the Central station, from where you can take the S-tog to Sydhavnen within 15 minuts.