Professor Sarah Franklin has published extensively on the social aspects of new reproductive technologies. She has conducted fieldwork on IVF, cloning, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and stem cells. Her work combines traditional anthropological approaches, including both ethnographic methods and kinship theory, with more recent approaches from science studies, gender theory, and cultural studies. Professor Franklin has an MA in Women’s Studies from the University of Kent (1984) and an MA in Anthropology from NYU (1986). She studied for her PhD at the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies from 1986-1989, taking her doctoral degree in 1992. From 1990-1993 she worked both in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University. From 1993 she moved to a fulltime position at Lancaster where she was promoted to a Chair in the Anthropology of Science in 2001. In 2004 she moved to the LSE where she was Professor of Social Studies of Biomedicine and Associate Director of the BIOS Centre until 2011. In June of 2011 she was elected to the Professorship of Sociology at Cambridge.
Professor Franklin has held Visiting professorships in teaching and research at the University of California, the University of Tarragona, the University of Hannover, and The University of Sydney. Her research has been supported by the ESRC, Leverhulme Trust, MRC, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Carnegie Foundation, European Commission, and the Wellcome Trust. Throughout her career she has worked closely with clinicians, patients, scientists and policymakers in an attempt to widen sociological engagement with emerging issues in bioscience and biomedicine. Since 2005, Professor Franklin has worked on a major project investigating the history of mammalian developmental biology in the UK in the post war period, with Professor Martin Johnson and Dr Nick Hopwood at Cambridge.
Through her ethnographic studies and other writings, Professor Franklin has contributed to a number of emergent fields in social theory including the ‘new kinship studies’, the feminist analysis of science, the anthropology of biomedicine, and the cultural analysis of new reproductive technologies.
Research
New reproductive technologies, sociology of biomedicine, science studies, kinship theory, gender, visual culture
Publications
Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells and the Future of Kinship (forthcoming)
Stem Cell Stories 1998-2008 Special Issue of Science as Culture Vol. 17, No. 1, ed. with Ingrid Geesink and Barbara Prainsack (2008).
Stem Cell Technologies 1998-2008: Controversies and Silence, Special Issue of Science as Culture, Vol 17, No. 4, ed. with Barbara Prainsack and Ingrid Geesink (2008)
Dolly Mixtures: the remaking of genealogyDuke University Press (2007)
Born and Made: an ethnography of preimplantation genetic diagnosisPrinceton University Press, with Celia Roberts (2006)
Off-Centre: feminism and cultural studies, Second Edition, Routledge, with J. Stacey and C. Lury (2006)
Remaking Life and Death: toward an anthropology of the biosciences SAR Press, ed. with Margaret Lock (2003)
Relative Values: reconfiguring kinship studyDuke University Press, ed. With Susan McKinnon (2001)
Global Nature, Global Culture Sage, with C. Lury and J. Stacey (2000)
Technologies of Procreation: kinship in the age of assisted conception, 2nd edition, Routledge, with J. Edwards, E. Hirsch, F. Price and M. Strathern (1999)
Reproducing Reproduction: kinship, power and technological innovation UPenn Press, ed. With Helena Ragone (1998)
Embodied Progress: a cultural account of assisted conception Routledge (1997) [extracts reprinted in German translation in B. Duden and D. Noeres, Auf den Spuren des Korpers in einer technogenen Welt, Leske and Budrich, Opladen, 2002].
The Sociology of Gender ‘Schools of Thought in Sociology’, Edward Elgar (1996).
Technologies of Procreation: kinship in the age of assisted conception Manchester University Press, with J. Edwards, E. Hirsch, F. Price and M. Strathern Manchester University Press (1993).
Procreation Stories: visual culture and reproductive politics(co-edited volume of Science as Culture with M. McNeil). Free Association Books (1993)
Contested Conceptions: a cultural account of assisted reproduction(doctoral thesis, Department of Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham). (1992)
Off-Centre: feminism and cultural studies(co-edited anthology with J. Stacey and C. Lury) Harper Collins (1991)
Research Reports
Public Culture as Professional Science (Final Report of a major Wellcome-funded project, 83pp, published under Creative Commons, with K Burchell and K Holden, 2009)
The Future of Biological Control: law, ethics and policy(Summary and report of a one day international symposium held in honour of the work of Dr Anne McLaren, London, 10 July 2008), with Emily Jackson.
Social Science Perspectives on Stem cells: a one day workshop sponsored by the BIOS Centre, Summary and Report of a networking meeting among UK stem cell researchers. (2005)
Ethnographic Eencounters with Reprogenetics, Department of Sociology/CESAGen, Lancaster University Wellcome funded workshop report, with Michal Nahman. (2003)
Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis: an ethnographic study. End of Award Report to the ESRC. (2002)
Revisiting Concepts of Gift in the New Genetics, co-authored Report based on an international symposium funded by the Wellcome Trust, with Richard Tutton. (2001)
European Council Kinship and the New Genetic Technologies: an assessment of existing anthropological research, co-authored Report to the EC based on an assessment of existing European scholarship on kinship, with M. Strathern. (1993)
European Council Kinship Studies in Europe: a database of anthropological sources, Dept. Anthropology, University of Manchester (compilation of bibliographic materials on kinship studies in Europe, indexed for ease of use on Papyrus software by author, subject, region and type, with M. Strathern and I. Klein. (1993)
Articles and Chapters
2011 ‘Specimens as Spectacles: Reframing Fetal Remains’ Social Text 29:1:103-125 (with Suzanne Anker).
2011 ‘A Feminist Transatlantic Education’ in Mary Evans and Kathy Davis, eds. Transatlantic Conversations: Feminism as Travelling Theory, Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 15-22.
2011 ‘Transbiology: a feminist account of being after IVF’ in The Scholar & Feminist Online, Special Issue ‘Critical Conceptions: Technology, Justice, and the Global Reproduction Market’, ed. Rebecca Jordan-Young.
2011 ‘Assisted Reproduction’ in Great Discoveries in Medicine, ed. William and Helen Bynum London: Thames and Hudson, pp. 280-283 (with Martin Johnson).
2010 ‘Why the Medical Research Council Refused Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe Support for Research on Human Conception in 1971’ Human Reproduction 25:9:2157-2174 (with Martin Johnson, Matthew Cottingham and Nick Hopwood)
2010 ‘Revisiting Reprotech: Shulamith Firestone and the Question of Technology’ in Mandy Merck and Stella Sandford, eds. Further Adventures of the Dialectic of Sex London: Palgrave, pp. 29-60
2010 ‘Who donates their embryos to research?’ Human Reproduction, 25 (Sup. 1). I278-I278, with Mounce, G. and Mardon, H. J. and Turner, K ISSN 0268-1161
2010 ‘Future Mix: Remodelling Biological Futures’ Humanimalia, Volume 2, Number 2
2009 ‘Ethical and Consent Issues in the Reproductive Setting: the case of egg, embryo and sperm donation’ in Tissue and Cell Donation, ed. Ruth Warwick, Deirdre Fehily, Ted Eastlund, Scott A. Brubaker (Chapter 12) pp. 222-243 (With Sharon Kaufman)
2009 ‘Genetic Bodies’ in Anita Herle, Mark Elliot and Rebecca Empson, eds. Assembling Bodies: Art, Science and Imagination, Cambridge: Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, pp. 66-67 (Exhibition Catalogue), ISBN 978-0-947595.
2009 ‘40 Years of IVF: 14th February 1969 – 2009’ (Commemorative Programme for a one day international symposium in Cambridge), London: Nature, 32 pp., with Nick Hopwood and Martin Johnson.
2008 ‘The Reproductive Revolution: how far have we come?’ (2005 Inaugural lecture) BIOS Working Paper 2, BIOS Centre: London School of Economics, ISSN: 7159 0620, 22pp.
2008 ‘To Know or Not to Know? (Book Review of Blood Matters by Masha Gessen) Nature 454, 17 July, pp. 277-8.
2008 ‘HESCCO: Development of Good Practice Models for hES Derivation’ Regenerative Medicine 3:1:105-116 (with Charles Hunt, Glenda Cornwell, Valerie Peddie, Paul Desousa, Morag Livie, Emma L Stephenson, and Peter R Braude).
2008 ‘Embryo Transfer: a View from the UK’ (Chapter 5) in Francesca Molfino and Flavia Zucco, eds. Women in Biotechnology: Creating Interfaces, Berlin: Springer, pp. 123-142, ISBN 978-1-4020-8610-6
2008 ‘Reimagining the Facts of Life’ Soundings: a journal of politics and culture, Issue 40, No. 3, Winter 2008, pp. 147-156, London: Lawrence and Wishart, ISSN 1362 6620
2008 ‘Guest Editorial: Stem Cell Controversies 1998-2008’ Science as Culture, Special Issue on Stem Cells, Part II,17:4:351-362 (with Barbara Prainsack and Ingrid Geesink).
2008 ‘Guest Editorial: Stem Cell Stories 1998-2008’ Science as Culture, Special Issue on Stem Cells, Part I, 17:1:1-12 (with Ingrid Geesink and Barbara Prainsack).
2008 ‘Industry in the Middle: Interview with Intercytex Founder and CSO, Dr Paul Kemp’ in Science as Culture, Special Issue on Stem Cells, Part II, 17:4:449-462 (with Lamprini Kaftantzi).
2008 ‘From Lab to Studio: The Arts of the Life Sciences’ in Catarina Albano, ed., Crossing Over: Exchanges in Art & Biotechnologies, London: ArtAkt, pp. 9-16 (Royal Institution of Great Britain Exhibition catalogue), with Chris Mason, ISBN: 978-0-9542416-1-2
2007 ‘Crook pipettes: Embryonic emigrations from agriculture to reproductive biomedicine’ , Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C, 38(2): 358-373.
2007 ‘Dolly’s Body: gender, genetics, and the new genetic capital’ in Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald, eds. The Animals Reader: the essential classic and contemporary writings, Oxford and New York: Berg, 349-361 (reprinted from Filozofski Vestnik 23(2):119-136, Llubjana: Zalozba ZRC Publishing, 2002).
2006 ‘Origin Stories Revisited: IVF as an anthropological project’, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 30:4:547-555.
2006 ‘Genetic Ambivalence: expertise, uncertainty and communication in the context of new genetic technologies’ in Andrew Webster, ed. New Technologies in Healthcare: challenge, change and innovation, London: Palgrave, pp.40-56 (with Anne Kerr).
2006 ‘Shulamith Firestone.’ in 50 Key Sociologists: The contemporary theorists, ed. John Scott, London: Routledge, pp. 77-80.
2006 ‘Mapping Biocapital: new frontiers of bioprospecting.’ Cultural Geographies 13:61-4.
2006 ‘Bio-economies: biowealth from the inside out.’ Development 49:4:97-101
2006 ‘The Cyborg Embryo: our path to transbiology’ Theory, Culture and Society, 23:7-8:167-188.
2006 ‘Better by Design?’ in Paul Miller and James Wilsdon, eds. Better humans?: the politics of human enhancement and life extension, London: DEMOS, pp. 86-95.
2006 ‘The IVF-Stem Cell Interface’ International Journal of Surgery 4:2:86-90.
2006 ‘Embryonic Economies: The Double Reproductive Value of Stem Cells’. Biosocieties 1:1:71-90
2005 ‘Stem Cells R Us: emergent life forms and the global biological’, in A. Ong and S. J. Collier, eds., Global Assemblages: Technology, politics and ethics as anthropological problems, New York and London: Blackwell, pp. 59-78.
2004 ‘Experiencing New Forms of Genetic Choice: findings from an ethnographic study of preimplantation genetic diagnosis’ Human Fertility 7:4:285-299 (with C. Roberts).
2004 ‘What We Know and What We Don’t About Cloning and Society’ in Peter Glasner, ed., Reconfiguring Nature: issues and debates in the new genetics, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 247-258.
2003 ‘Drawing the Line at Not-Fully-Human: what we already know’, American Journal of Bioethics, 3:3:25-26.
2003 ‘Re-thinking Nature-Culture: anthropology and the new genetics’, Anthropological Theory, Vol 3(1):65-85.
2003 ‘Kinship, Genes, and Cloning: life after Dolly’ in Alan Goodman, Deborah Heath and Susan Lindee, eds. Genetic Nature-Culture, University of California Press, pp 95-110.
2003 ‘Ethical biocapital: new strategies of cell culture’ in S. Franklin and M. Lock, eds., Remaking life and death: toward an anthropology of the biosciences, Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, pp 97-128
2003 ‘Animation and Cessation: the remaking of life and death’, editor’s introduction, S. Franklin and M. Lock, eds., Remaking life and death: toward an anthropology of the biosciences, Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, pp 3-22 (with Margaret Lock).
2003 ‘Clones and Cloning: new reproductive futures’, in R. Levinson and M. J. Reiss, eds. Key Issues in Bioethics: a guide for teachers, London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 69-78.
2002 ‘Communicating health and the new genetics’ Finnish Information Studies 20: 27-45.
2002 ‘”Du must es versuchen!” und “du must Dich entscheiden!” Was IVF den Frauen sagt’, in B. Duden and D. Noeres, Auf den Spuren des Korpers in einer technogenen Welt, Leske and Budrich, Opladen, pp. 359-393.
2002 ‘The Anthropology of Science’ in Jeremy MacClancy, ed., Anthropology for the World, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2002 ‘Dolly the World Famous Sheep’ in C. Mendes and E. R. Larreta, eds., Identity and Difference in the Global Era, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: UNESCO/Candido Mendes University Press, pp. 221-243
2001 ‘Gene answer spawns a lot of questions’, The Times Higher Educational Supplement, June 15, p. 19.
2001 ‘Sheepwatching’ Anthropology Today Vol 17 (3): 3-9
2001 ‘Introduction: kinship studies reconfigured’ in Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon, eds. Relative Values: reconfiguring kinship studies, Durham: Duke University Press.
2001 ‘Biologization Revisited: kinship theory in the context of the new biologies’, in Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon, eds. Relative Values: reconfiguring kinship studies, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 302-22.
2001 ‘The Kin in the Gene’ (Reply to Finkler) Current Anthropology 42:2:250-251.
2000 ‘Biopower’, ‘Biotechnology’, ‘Cyborg’, ‘Cyborg Feminism’, ‘Donna Haraway’, and ‘science’ in Lorraine Code, ed. Encyclopedia of Feminist Theory, London: Routledge, pp. 50-51, 123-4, 236-7, 433-5.
2000 ‘New Directions in Kinship Study’, Current Anthropology 41:2:275-279 (with Susan McKinnon).
1999 ‘Dead Embryos: feminism in suspension’ in Lynn Morgan and Meredith Michaels, eds. Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions, Philadelphia, PN: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 61-82.
1999 ‘What We Know and What We Don’t About Cloning and Society’, New Genetics and Society, Volume 18, No. 1, pp: 111-120 (Reprinted in P. Glasner, ed. Reconfiguring Nature: issues and debates in the new genetics, Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2004, pp. 247-258).
1999 ‘Orphaned Embryos’ in J. Edwards, et al, Technologies of Procreation: kinship age of assisted conception, Second Edition, London: Routledge, pp. 167-170.
1999 ‘Animal Models: an anthropologist considers Dolly’ in Elisabeth Hildt and Sigrid Graumann, eds. Genetics in Human Reproduction Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 197-208.
1998 ‘Making Miracles: scientific progress and the facts of life’, in Reproducing Reproduction, ed. S. Franklin & H. Ragone, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 102-117.
1998 ‘Introduction’, Reproducing Reproduction, ed. S. Franklin and H. Ragone, University of Pennsylvania Press (with H. Ragone), pp. 1-14.
1997 ‘Remapping the Germline: dilemmas, cultural knowledge and biopolitics’ in Lorna Weir, ed., Governing Medically Assisted Human Reproduction: report of an international symposium, Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, pp. 45-51.
1997 ‘Dolly: a new form of genetic breedwealth’, Environmental Values, 6:427-437 (forthcoming in German translation).
1997 ‘Conception, theories of’, ‘Science’ , ‘Reproductive Technology’ and ‘Cultural Studies’ in A. Barnard and J. Spencer, eds., Encyclopedic Dictionary of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Routledge.
1996 ‘Making Transparencies: seeing through the science wars’, Social Text 46-47:141-156, (reprinted in A. Ross, ed., Science Wars, Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
1996 ‘From Feminist Sociology to the Sociology of Gender’, editor’s introduction, The Sociology of Gender, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. ix-xlvii.
1996 ‘Postmodern Body Techniques’, Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 18:95-106.
1995 ‘Science as Culture, Cultures of Science’, Annual Review of Anthropology 24:163-84.
1995 ‘Romancing the Helix: nature and scientific discovery’, in J. Stacey and L. Pearce, eds. Romance Revisited, London: Falmer Press, pp. 63-77.
1995 ‘Life’, in W. Reich, ed., Encyclopedia of Bioethics, New York: Macmillan, pp. 456-62.
1995 ‘Postmodern Procreation’, in Conceiving the New World Order, ed. F. Ginsburg and R. Rapp, University of California Press, (reprinted in Science as Culture, 17:522-61).
1993 ‘Procreation Stories’ (editorial introduction) Science as Culture, 3:4:17:477-482, with M. McNeil.
1993 ‘Essentialism, Which Essentialism?: some implications of reproductive and genetic techno-science’, Journal of Homosexuality, 24:3-4:27-40 (reprinted in J. DeCecco and J. Elia, eds., Biological Essentialism vs Social Constructionism in Gay and Lesbian Identities, London: Haworth Press, 1993, pp. 27-40).
1993 ‘Making Representations: the parliamentary debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act’, in J. Edwards, et al, Technologies of Procreation, Manchester University Press, pp. 96-132.
1993 ‘Imaging and Imagining the Missing Link’ (feature article) The Times Higher Educational Supplement, 9 October, p. 18.
1992 ‘Making Sense of Misconceptions: anthropological approaches to unexplained infertility’, in M. Stacey, ed., Changing Human Reproduction: social science perspectives, London: Sage, pp. 75-91 (reprinted in Louise Lamphere, Helena Ragone & Patricia Zavella, eds., 1997, Situated Lives: gender and culture in everyday life, Routledge, pp. 99-109).
1991 ‘Feminism and Cultural Studies: pasts, presents, futures’, in S. Franklin, C. Lury & J. Stacey, eds., Off Centre: feminism and Cultural Studies, London: Harper Collins, pp. 1-20 (reprinted in Media, Culture & Society, 13:2:171-192; in Media, Culture, Power: a reader, ed. P. Scannell, London: Sage, 1992, and in Feminist Cultural Studies, ed. T. Lovell (1995), with J. Stacey and C. Lury.
1991 ‘Feminism, Marxism and Thatcherism’, in S. Franklin, C. Lury & J. Stacey, eds., Off Centre: feminism and Cultural Studies, London: Harper Collins, pp. 21-48, with C. Lury and J. Stacey.
1991 ‘In the Wake of the Alton Bill: Science, Technology and Reproductive Politics’, in S. Franklin, C. Lury & J. Stacey, eds., Off Centre: feminism and Cultural Studies, London: Harper Collins, pp. 147-214, with Science and Technology Subgroup, CCCS.
1991 ‘Science and Technology: questions for feminism and cultural studies’, in S. Franklin, C. Lury & J. Stacey, eds., Off Centre: feminism and Cultural Studies, London: Harper Collins, pp. 129-146, with M. McNeil.
1991 ‘Fetal fascinations: new medical constructions of fetal personhood’, in S. Franklin, C. Lury & J. Stacey, eds., Off Centre: feminism and Cultural Studies, London: Harper Collins, pp. 190-205.
1990 ‘Deconstructing “Desperateneness”: the social construction of infertility in popular media representations’ in M. McNeil, I. Varcoe and S. Yearley, eds., The New Reproductive Technologies, London: Macmillan, pp. 200-229.
1988 Lifestory: the new gene as fetish object’, Science as Culture, 3:92-101.
1988 ‘Reproductive Futures: recent literature and current debates on reproductive technologies’, Feminist Studies, 14:3:545-61, with M. McNeil.
