Research Associates
In addition to being an Associate Member of the Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality Research Group, Astrod Bochow is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Research Network Religion, HIV/AIDS and Social Transformation Research Network (www.religion-aids-africa.org).
Marcia C. Inhorn, PhD, MPH, is the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs in the Department of Anthropology and The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.
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A specialist on Middle Eastern gender, religion, and health, Inhorn has conducted research on the social impact of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Arab America over the past 30 years. She is the author of five books on the subject, including her most recent, Cosmopolitan Conceptions: IVF Sojourns in Global Dubai (Duke University Press, 2015); she is also the editor of nine volumes on gender and reproductive health. Inhorn is the founding editor of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies (JMEWS), and co-editor of the Berghahn Book series on “Fertility, Reproduction, and Sexuality.” She has served as president of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), and director of Middle East centers at both Yale University and University of Michigan.
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Inhorn has received more than a dozen awards for her books and scholarship, including, most recently, the 2015 Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association. Currently, Inhorn is completing a National Science Foundation-funded research study on oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing) for both medical and elective fertility preservation. Her latest book on Arab refugee reproductive health is under contract with Stanford University Press.
Mara Mabilia received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Parma. She is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Padua, and a lecturer at other postgraduate programmes: at the Specialization Course of Tropical Medicine and International Health, University of Brescia, at the Core Course of the European Master's in International Health, TropMedEurop., and at the Master's in Inter-Cultural Studies, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, University of Padova.
She is also Professor of Social Anthropology at the Counselling School, Bassano del Grappa. She lectures on Social and Medical Anthropological subjects, on African and Gender Studies at university and secondary school levels, and in training courses for doctors and socio-medical personnel.
She has had various academic experiences: as visiting research fellow at the Centre for International Gender Studies (formerly Centre for Cross-cultural Research on Women), Department for International Development Studies, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, under director Dr Soraya Tremayne and supervisor Dr Renate Barber, (October 1994 to March 1995); as visiting research associate at the Department of Anthropology, University College London, under supervisor Prof. Murray Last (February to July 1996); as visiting scholar at the Department of Anthropology, Duke University (North Carolina), where she conducted extensive library research and gave a lecture for the Department of Biological Anthropology, under director Prof. Carel Schaick (January 1999).
Her field research focuses on reproductive health, gender relations and HIV/AIDS issues in sub-Saharan Africa. She carried out field research in Kenya, Tanzania, and in Italy. She collaborated with the Institute for Infectious and Tropical Diseases, University of Brescia, on the research project “Knowledge, attitudes and practices on breast feeding among African women”. Her most recent research is on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) among groups of immigrant women in some Italian regions. She is currently writing a paper on this research. She is the author of numerous scientific publications. A podcast of the November 2014 seminar which she presented through FRSG can be found at https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/revisiting-breastfeeding-light-gift-logic-comparison-gogo-and-italian-women-possible.
David Parkin is the co-founder and former director of FRSG and Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography and All Souls College, University of Oxford. He is Visiting Professor at the Max Planck Institute, Goettingen, Germany for 2010. For publications and further information, see http://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/about-us/affiliates-emeriti-research-fellows/prof-david-parkin/.
Maya Unnithan is Professor of Social and Medical Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies and Health (CORTH) at the University of Sussex (www.sussex.ac.uk/corth). She received a Ph.D (1991) in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University and holds degrees in Sociology (MA) and Economics (BA Hons). Her research interests include caste, gender and body politics; reproductive agency in the context of infertility, childbirth and maternal health inequalities, procreative technologies, female selective abortion, sexual reproductive health rights, surrogacy. Maya has thirty years of field based research experience in Northwest India.
Her recent Economic and Social Science Research Council funded research project was on civil society understandings of human rights as applied to sexual, maternal and reproductive health in India. External to the university, Maya has served as a member of the WHO steering committee on rights based evidence in the context of maternal and child health (2012-2013). She is currently Chair of the Medical Anthropology Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute.