GENDER.ED Welcome Reception

We are kicking off the new academic year with the GENDER.ED Welcome Reception for 2025-26, and everyone is invited!

We are so excited to announce that this year’s event features an exhibition curated by the University of Edinburgh's very own Dr Marie Larsson, Research Fellow at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society.

The event will begin with a networking reception and a chance to look at the exhibition, which will take place between 5pm - 6pm in the Chrystal Macmillan Foyer.

The roundtable discussion will then take place from 6pm - 7pm in Seminar Rooms 1 and 2.

You will be given three options for registration:

• Attend both the networking reception/exhibition and the roundtable;
• Attend the networking reception/exhibition only;
• Attend the roundtable only.

Exhibition: The Pill. Angry Chuckles

This exhibition showcases original and found poems developed by researchers, healthcare professionals and students based on interview excerpts that reflect experiences of real individuals with contraceptives, sexual and reproductive health, and pregnancy and STI prevention. Through the excerpts, the poetry drawn from them, and accompanying artworks by artist Frank Rokhlin, we explore a wide range of experiences and interpretations – a dialogue between interviewees, researchers, poets and readers on shared and contrasting experiences of contracepting. As a society, we need more open, honest and caring conversations around contraception, pregnancy and STI prevention. The exhibition asks you to take part in this conversation through personal reflection and developing your own found poetry based on the interview excerpts. Have you used contraception or contraceptive services? Have you, or might you, experience abortion, pregnancy or STIs? Do you help to design policy? Are you a researcher or healthcare provider? Take a moment to reflect on your own experiences and think about how you might help improve contraceptive experiences or support people in your life navigating these issues. Curated by Dr Marie Larsson (a sociologist of health and medicine), this exhibition is part of a pilot project focusing on creative methods and interdisciplinary collaboration in contraceptive research.

Roundtable: Researching Contraception, Gendered Relationships and Social Justice

To provide context and explore the exhibition's themes, a roundtable discussion will take place from 6-7pm featuring Marie Larsson, Lauren Galligan, Arushi Sahay, and Ingrid Young. They will address the paradoxical nature of contraception as a technology that can be simultaneously liberating and oppressive, across scales from the personal to the global, and in ways that shaped by intersecting forms of inequality and privilege. The panellists, drawing on their expertise as researchers, academics, community organisers and practitioners, will discuss the challenges of researching contraception, sexual and reproductive health, gendered inequalities, and the intimate relationships in which all this plays out They will also reflect on efforts to engage marginalised people on these issues via creative, arts-based and participatory approaches, and the scope for involving communities in pursuit of social justice.

Speaker Biographies:

Dr Ingrid Young is a Reader in the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society at the University of Edinburgh. She is a medical sociologist who works with qualitative methods, including arts-based and participatory methods. She specialises in sexual and reproductive health and social justice, gender, biotechnologies and community activism.

Arushi Sahay is a PhD Researcher in Anthropology & Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute, where her research investigates how female surgical sterilisation comes to be enabled, elected and enacted as the most prevalent mode of contraception in India. She is a visiting research student in the University’s School of Social and Political Science for the Autumn 2025 semester.

Lauren Galligan is the Research and Participation Worker at The Young Women’s Movement, Scotland’s National Organisation for Young Women and Girls’ Leadership and Rights. She was a GENDER.ED intern, and currently also works at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.

Dr Marie Larsson is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, University of Edinburgh, currently working on enhancing post-abortion contraception in Scotland. Her doctoral research examined "the work of contracepting" and young people's experiences and practices with contraceptives in Sweden. As a critical sociologist and qualitative researcher, she wants to improve experiences and address injustices in sexual and reproductive health, contraception and abortion.

Dr Lucy Lowe is Senior Lecturer in anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research examines how practices and ideologies of gender, motherhood, and reproduction are centred in processes of migration and asylum, and explores the relationship between reproductive and migrant (in)justice.

Registration

This is a free event, which means we overbook to allow for no-shows and to avoid empty seats. While we generally do not have to turn people away, this does mean we cannot guarantee everyone a place. Admission is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Please note, filming, recording and/or photography may take place at this event.

If you have any queries regarding this event, please email gender.ed@ed.ac.uk.