Reproductive Health in Fragile Democracies
Symposium
08.06.2026. - 09.06.2026.
Reproductive health technologies have long been intertwined with shifting ideas of normality, moral economies of care, and political visions of the future. They enable people to pursue self-determination, intimacy, and kinship, while also serving as tools for shaping populations and policing the boundaries of family formation and citizenship. From eugenic projects in the interwar Europe to the contemporary debates about abortion, assisted conception and genetic interventions, decisions about reproduction have never been purely medical. Reproduction becomes a site where biomedicine, personal aspirations, social inequalities and political power meet.
In the context of today’s increasingly fragile or polarized democracies, these questions take on renewed urgency. This symposium "Reproductive Health in Fragile Democracies: Bodies, Technologies and Futures" examines how reproductive health, political imaginaries, and democratic practices structure one another. We ask:
- How do reproductive technologies open possibilities for care, belonging and inclusive futures, while simultaneously reinforcing exclusions and hierarchies?
- How are personal reproductive desires entangled with state interventions, market logics and global inequalities?
- How do authoritarian and totalitarian legacies of reproductive governance continue to shape contemporary debates over access, justice, and normality?
As a museum, we position ourselves as a space where diverse disciplines, experiences and publics can meet. The symposium is part of the accompanying programme to the 2026 exhibition Unaccountables, expanding its themes into research and public debate.
Keynote Speakers
- Agnieszka Kościańska, University of Warsaw: ‘“I’m not leaving the Church, it’s the Church that is leaving me”: Polish private and public deliberations on reproductive rights, Catholicism and the state’
- Anika König, Freie Universität Berlin: ‘Reproductive Entanglements: Local Worlds and Global Markets in Times of Crisis’
Call for Contributions
We welcome contributions from the social sciences, humanities and healthcare disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, history, political science, philosophy, gender studies, medical humanities, and clinical practice. We invite work that explores reproduction as a site where democratic ideals, inequalities, care, and political futures are negotiated. This includes research with a historical, ethnographic, theoretical, practice-based or interdisciplinary approach.
Possible Themes
- Histories of reproductive governance – eugenics, pronatalism, citizenship and their legacies.
- Technologies of hope – assisted reproduction, genetics, surrogacy and emerging reproductive tools.
- Lived experiences – embodiment, loss, disability, intimacy and everyday ethics of reproductive care.
- Reproduction and democracy – rights, access, justice and political transformations.
- Intersections – environmental and planetary dimensions, reproductive labour, and care economies.
Practical Information
Admission: Free of charge.
Abstract Submission:
Please submit a title, affiliation and a 200-word abstract via the online form
Submission deadline: March 1, 2026 (11:55 PM CET)
Notification of acceptance: March 15, 2026
Venue:
Pauls Stradiņš Medicine History Museum
Riga, Latvia
About the Exhibition: Unaccountables
“The Unaccountables” explores how evolving ideas of progress have shaped the understanding of the capabilities, value and health criteria of human and nonhuman beings. The exhibition presents historical and contemporary examples, from attempts to classify and improve life, the ideas of eugenics and the fates of psychiatric institution patients to the possibilities offered by contemporary genetics, reproductive technologies and longevity research.
By examining lives that have fallen outside the narrow categories of normality or productivity, the exhibition asks: why, and with what justification, do science, political power and technology strive to perfect living nature? “The Unaccountables” encourages reflection on the importance of diversity, empathy and inclusion in a future shaped by scientific achievements yet reaching beyond them.
Funding:
The Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ Foundation).
