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2. The University of Cambridge invites applications for a doctoral studentship funded by a Wellcome Trust strategic award in history of medicine. We seek outstanding candidates whose research would fall within the theme 'Generation to Reproduction'.

Possible areas for doctoral projects include, but are not limited to:

- patient–practitioner relations around fertility and other encounters that framed the generative body;
- the influence of diseases, including venereal diseases, on reproductive behaviour and demographic patterns;
- representation and communication of generation and reproduction;
- ancient, medieval and early-modern investigations into generation;
- generation and childbirth in medical cases and casebooks;
- the reorganization of knowledge of generation/reproduction, especially in the age of revolutions;
- such sciences as embryology, obstetrics, gynaecology, evolutionary biology, reproductive physiology, genetics and developmental biology;
- reform movements around birth control, population control and sexual science;
- twentieth-century transformations in techniques, experiences and regulation;
- networks linking academic biology to reproductive medicine and public health, agriculture, especially animal breeding, and/or pharmaceutical industry;
- techniques for monitoring and manipulating pregnancy, hormones, genes, gametes and embryos, e.g., genetic screening, in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer;
- sexology, psychology and psychoanalysis, including social and psychological practices for making babies and families.

The three-year studentship pays a generous stipend plus University and College fees at the home rate only. Candidates will usually be expected to hold a Master's in the history of medicine or with strong emphasis on the history of medicine.

Informal inquiries may be made to the award holder with the most relevant interests. A list of award holders can be found at: www.reproduction.group.cam.ac.uk/team.html

Formal applications should be submitted through the relevant Department or Faculty in the usual way, indicating an interest in the studentship. The deadline for applications to be admitted in October 2012 is 15 February 2012 (1 February if online), but since other funding deadlines are earlier, candidates are advised to make contact as soon as possible. Further details of how to apply can be found at: www.reproduction.group.cam.ac.uk/studentships.html
Communicating Reproduction
5–6 December 2011

3. A conference to be held in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge.

Scholars have explored continuities and discontinuities in theories of sex and gender; knowledge of entities such as seeds, germs, embryos, monsters and clones; concerns about creation, evolution, degeneration and regeneration; investments in maternity, paternity and heredity; practices of fertility control, potency and childbirth; and health relations between citizen and state, individual and population. But we have paid much less attention to the huge changes in processes and media of communication. There is important work on specific practices, from education to advertising, conversation to mass entertainment, and on specific media, from ritual objects to printed books, films to the internet. But we lack synthetic and comparative accounts. This conference aims to explore how we might best ground debates about reproduction in changing practices of communication over the long term, though primarily within the Western tradition. Nor is reproduction just a lens through which to view the history of communication. For generation and reproduction are themselves potent metaphors for communication. Richard de Bury wrote in /Philobiblon/ (1345) of the making of books as a form of generation across time and modern authors often frame the distribution of identical copies in terms of mechanical reproduction.

The conference will bring together scholars representing ancient to modern periods and various disciplines. Talks will be 20-minute summaries of pre-circulated papers, followed by commentary and discussion in one-hour slots in such a way as to promote dialogue and critical engagement between fields and approaches.

Speakers and provisional titles:

Helen King (Open University): Educating Lucina: midwives and the communication of reproductive knowledge, ancient and early modern
Montserrat Cabré (Universidad de Cantabria, Spain): Iberian recipes and the appropriation of knowledge in relation to human reproduction
Catherine Rider (University of Exeter): Communicating religious views of infertility in the Middle Ages
Jennifer Richards (Newcastle University): 'Issue dangerous to the Queen': pregnancy and politics in the Elizabethan polity
Mary Fissell (The Johns Hopkins University): Making a masterpiece from bits and pieces
Angelique Richardson (University of Exeter): Reproduction and the post-Darwinian novel
Staffan Müller-Wille (University of Exeter): Reproducing species
Wendy Kline (University of Cincinnati): Coming home: modern midwifery and the controversy over home birth
Solveig Jülich (Stockholm University): The Lennart Nilsson-industry: remediating images of life before birth
Uta Schwarz (Cologne): Introduction to the film Helga (1967)
Ludmilla Jordanova (King's College, London): Closing comments

Organisers: Nick Hopwood, Peter Jones, Lauren Kassell, Francis Neary, Jim Secord

To register, please follow the instructions at:
http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/medicine/communicating.html

Funded by a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award in the History of Medicine on 'Generation to Reproduction' http://www.reproduction.group.cam.ac.uk/

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