Grace Halden
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Overview
Overview
Biography
I am a cultural historian with a broad focus on technology and posthumanism. I specialise in reproductive health, reproductive technologies, assisted reproduction (IUI and IVF), donor conception, and bioethics. I mainly work on 20th and 21st century literature and culture. My work is interdisciplinary and sits in the juncture between literary studies and medical humanities.
My current research project is called Cyborg Conception (for which I have held 3 separate grants). Cyborg Conception focuses on cultural responses to donor conception, solo motherhood by choice, and assisted reproduction.
My recent monograph Cyborg Conception: Cultural and Critical Responses to Solo Motherhood by Choice published by Palgrave, combines creative (lived experience) and critical writing on solo motherhood via gamete donation. This book considers the growing popularity of solo motherhood via gamete donation and how this is narrated in medicine, bioethics, fiction, and memoir
2023/2024 Teaching
Director: BA English; BA English and Language; BA English with Foundation Year
Co-director: MA Medical Humanities
Convener: Theorising the Contemporary, Being Human, Methods
Teaching: Creative Non-Fiction, Theorising the Contemporary, Being Human, The Novel, Storytelling.
Highlights
Cyborg Conception: Cultural and Critical Responses to Solo Motherhood by Choice (Palgrave Macmillan 2024)
2023: Ronald Tress Prize
2023: Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
2022-2023. ISSF Wellcome full funding for project: Independent Family Planning: Choosing Solo Motherhood through Gamete Donation. Summary: Through co-production with the donor conception community, I aim to produce an 8-page A5 booklet on solo motherhood by choice to be shared with fertility clinics specialising in donor conception. The objective of this booklet is to highlight to industry professionals the lived experiences of SMBC at the stages of family planning, choosing donor gametes, embarking on the conception journey, pregnancy, and birth. More information here:
Publication: 'Fatherlessness, sperm donors and ‘so what?’ parentage: arguing against the immorality of donor conception through ‘world literature’, Medical Humanities, 25 April 2022. doi: 10.1136/medhum-2021-012328 (part of the ISSF/Wellcome Cyborg Conception funded project)
Publication of 'Independent Family Planning: Choosing Solo Motherhood through Gamete Donation. A guide for fertility healthcare professionals' (Wellcome, March 2023) peer reviewed by The Donor Conception Network, Dr Thanos Papathanasiou (Bourn Hall Clinic), and Dr Suzy Buckley (UCL).
2020-2021: ISSF Wellcome full funding for 12 months. Project: 'Cyborg Conception: technologized reproduction and posthuman families in literary and cultural imagination'. This project will intervene in the interdisciplinary field of the medical humanities by understanding the cultural mediation of assisted reproduction through literature since 1978. Across three key genres, ‘Cyborg Conception’ analyses how literature forms part of the reimagined ‘entangled’ medical humanities (as articulated by Fitzgerald and Callard), interrogating and even ‘reanimating’ medical understandings of, and discourses around, assisted reproduction.
2021: Winner: Best Dissertation/Project Supervisor for Birkbeck Heroes (Birkbeck Students' Union)
Office hours
Mondays and Wednesdays
Qualifications
- PGCHE, 2017
- PhD, 2014
- QTS, 2009
- MA by Research, 2007
- BA Hons, 2005
Web profiles
Administrative responsibilities
- Director of BA English
- Member of the Open Access Research Group
- Convener for Theorising the Contemporary, Being Human, Methods
- Co-director Medical Humanities
- Co-director Centre for Medical and Health Humanities
Professional memberships
Fellow of Royal Society for Public Health
Professional member of the Donor Conception Nework
Member of the SFRA
HEA Fellow
Member Open Access Sub-Committee at Birkbeck
Member of the Atomic Photographer’s Guild
Honours and awards
- Ronald Tress Prize for Outstanding Research, Birkbeck, November 2023
- Fellow, Royal Society of Public Health, November 2023
- Translation Award/Grant, Wellcome/ISSF, November 2022
- Award: Community-Facing Events. For: Anonymity and Donor Conception in the Digital Age, Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN), November 2022
- Vice Chancellor Teaching Award , Birkbeck, November 2023
- 2021: Winner: Best Dissertation/Project Supervisor for Birkbeck Heroes), Birkbeck Students' Union, November 2021
- Research Grant, ISSF, November 2020
- High commendation, Public Engagement Awards, November 2018
- Birkbeck Excellence in Teaching Award (BETA), Birkbeck, November 2017
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Research
Research
Research interests
- Modern and contemporary literature
- Donor conception
- Bioethics
- Reproductive Health
- Memoir
- Assisted reproduction
- Technological Development
- Lived experience
- Ruination
- Global literature
- American literature
- Posthumanism
- Transhumanism
- Artificial Intelligence
- bio-objects
- World War Two and Cold War
- Techological singularity
- Nuclear power / nuclear technology
- Human condition and human rights
- Hannah Arendt
- Primo Levi
- Marshall McLuhan
- Jean Baudrillard
- Martin Heidegger
- Jacques Derrida
- Cybernetics
- Apocalypse theory/prediction/narratives/religious/secular apocalypse,
- urban exploration
Research clusters and groups
- Co-founder, STAG: Solo Parent Talk and Action Group
- Member, First Contact Research Group.
Research projects
Institutional Strategic Support Fund, ISSF (1)
Institutional Strategic Support Fund, ISSF (2)
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Supervision and teaching
Supervision and teaching
Supervision
I am currently welcoming proposals for PhD study. In the first instance please submit an informal letter of interest to me at g.halden@bbk.ac.uk. I will work with successful applicants on relevant funding applications including CHASE and Wellcome.
I welcome proposals on the following topics (click here)
Current doctoral researchers
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EMILY BERRY
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JEMMA WALTON
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ORLA CUBITT
Doctoral alumni since 2013-14
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SIDDHARTH YADAV
Teaching
I mainly teach modern and contemporary literature, creative writing, creative/critical writing, critical theory, cultural history, and medical humanities. I teach at all levels - foundation year, BA, MA, PHD. I am also a qualified teacher (QTS) in secondary school and further education. I have won a couple of teaching awards.
As a qualified teacher of over ten years, I have a background in teaching English pre further education. I currently do outreach work in local schools offering workshops, seminars, lectures and CPD for staff. I am currently working with the English Association on forging connections between academia and schools.
Qualifications: Certificate of Governance (2010), QTS (GTP) 2008, PGCHE (2017), Fellow HEA (2017).
Teaching modules
- Theorising the Contemporary, Contemporary Theorising (AREN095S7)
- Dissertation (Literature and Culture 1800-present) (AREN145D7)
- Being Human: Posthumanism and the 21st Century (AREN231S7)
- Writing the Planet (AREN292S7)
- Creative Non-Fiction (ENHU002S7)
- The Novel: Writing the Modern World (ENHU009S5)
- Critical Entanglements and Methods in the Medical Humanities (SSHC483S7)
- Dissertation in Medical Humanities (SSHC485D7)
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Publications
Publications
Article
- Halden, Grace and King, H. (2024) Regulation needs to acknowledge that donor siblings connect before 18. PET: BioNews
- Halden, Grace (2024) Is the export of donor sperm explained adequately to recipients?. PET: BioNews (1222),
- Halden, Grace (2023) The relationship between solo parents and fertility clinics. PET: BIONEWS (1195),
- Halden, Grace (2022) Fatherlessness, sperm donors, and ‘So What?’ parentage: arguing against the immorality of donor conception through ‘World Literature’". Medical Humanities ISSN 1468-215X.
- Halden, Grace (2022) We all fall down: nuclear families and post-nuclear worlds. Berlinale Film Festival
- Halden, Grace (2021) Donor conception was my 'Plan A'. DCN Journal (25), pp. 13-14.
- Halden, Grace (2016) Haunting clouds. Alluvium ISSN 2050-1560.
- Halden, Grace (2015) 20 things you didn't know about... immortality. Discover Magazine ISSN 0274-7529.
- Halden, Grace (2014) The many Doctors symposium: critical reflection on Christopher Eccelstone’s Doctor. Science Fiction Film & Television 7 (2), pp. 244-246. ISSN 1754-3770.
- Halden, Grace (2013) The human behind the avatar. Warscapes
- Halden, Grace (2013) Textual nuclear war based on the memory of Hiroshima. eSharp (20), ISSN 1742-4542.
Book
- Halden, Grace (2024) Cyborg conception: cultural and critical responses to solo motherhood by choice. Palgrave. ISBN 9783031593857.
- Halden, Grace (2017) Three Mile Island: the meltdown crisis and nuclear power in American popular culture. Critical Moments in American History. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9781138917644.
- Halden, Grace and Madlo, G., eds. (2013) Concerning evil. Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press. ISBN 9781848882324.
Book Section
- Halden, Grace (2020) British Science Fiction 1990-2017: technology themed fiction in the light of the new millennium and speculative ‘Singularity’. In: Bradford, Richard and Gonzalez, M. and Butler, S. and Ward, J. and De Ornellas, K. (eds.) The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature. Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature Series. Wiley Blackwell. pp. 643-654. ISBN 9781119099796.
- Halden, Grace (2019) Photography and digital art. In: McFarlane, A. and Murphy, G.J. and Schmeink, L. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture. Routledge Companions. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9780815351931.
- Halden, Grace (2016) Growing up in the 21st Century: pretty little liars and their pretty little devices. In: D'Amico, L. (ed.) Girl Talk: The Influence of Girls’ Series Fiction on American Popular Culture. Children and Youth in Popular Culture. New York, U.S.: Lexington. pp. 269-292. ISBN 9781498517645.
- Halden, Grace (2015) Lighting. In: Smith, M. (ed.) The World of the American Revolution: A Daily Life Encyclopedia [2 volumes]: A Daily Life Encyclopedia. ABC-Clio Greenwood. ISBN 9781440830273.
- Halden, Grace (2015) Mills. In: Smith, M. (ed.) The World of the American Revolution: A Daily Life Encyclopedia [2 volumes]: A Daily Life Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, U.S.: ABC-Clio Greenwood. ISBN 9781440830273.
Conference Item
- Halden, Grace and Burks, A. (2017) Waste: a symposium. Papers on disposability, decay, and depletion. Waste: A Symposium. Papers on Disposability, Decay, and Depletion, 2017, London, UK
- Halden, Grace Barren planets and the ovum-like Death Star: family, fertility and assisted reproduction in Star Wars (1977-2019). Science Fiction Research Association, Toronto, Canada
Editorial
- Halden, Grace and Burks, A. Halden, Grace and Burks, A., eds. Waste: disposability, decay, and depletion. Waste: Disposability, Decay, and Depletion. Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities. ISSN 2056-6700.
Image
- Halden, Grace (2017) Radiation mannequin. Atomic Photographer's Guild.
Monograph
- Halden, Grace (2023) Independent family planning: choosing solo motherhood through gamete donation. A guide for fertility healthcare professionals. The Wellcome Trust.
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Business and community
Business and community
Media
I am happy to receive enquiries from the media on the following topics:
- Assisted reproduction
- Donor conception
- Reproductive health
- solo parenthood by choice
- Posthumanism
Outreach
2022-2023. Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN) funding for Award: Community-Facing Events. For: Anonymity and Donor Conception in the Digital Age.
EVENT: The Problem of Anonymity: A Film Showing of Offspring (2001) and a Discussion of Donor Anonymity in the Digital Age. 24 March 2023. Booking linl: https://bbk.ac.uk/events/remote_event_view?id=35850
2023 (montly)
STAG: Solo-Parent Talk and Action Group. Community Café.
Co-organised with Harriet Barratt, Natasza Lentner (admin for the Facebook groups Solo Parents by Choice UK), Ruth Talbot (founder of Single Parent Rights), and Dr Suzy Buckley from UCL.
This group provides a monthly space through which to discuss current research and developments in the field of donor conception for the donor conception community. Each event has two guest speakers. This is a free, public facing series.
2022. 'Effecting Change: Café for Solo Parents by Choice', Being Human Festival, November. Co-organiser alongside Dr Harriet Barratt. Tickets sold: 105.
Aimed at solo parents by choice (SPBC) through gamete donation, this community-based café offers attendees the opportunity to discuss current research and developments within the donor conception world and talk about how they are trying to effect positive change. Hosted by two solo mothers by choice, Grace Halden and Harriet Barratt, this is a safe space for reflection on the solo conception pathway. Joining us and talking about their work is admin for the Facebook groups Solo Parents by Choice UK Natasza Ann Lentner, founder of Single Parent Rights Ruth Talbot, and Associate Professor Suzy Buckley who is currently researching the experiences and support networks of solo mothers.
2022-2023. ISSF Wellcome full funding for project: Independent Family Planning: Choosing Solo Motherhood through Gamete Donation.
Summary: Through co-production with the donor conception community, I aim to produce an 8-page A5 booklet on solo motherhood by choice to be shared with fertility clinics specialising in donor conception. The objective of this booklet is to highlight to industry professionals the lived experiences of SMBC at the stages of family planning, choosing donor gametes, embarking on the conception journey, pregnancy, and birth. More information here:
2021-
I am a professional member of the Donor Conception Network (DCN) and a volunteer for the DCN.
2017-
As a qualified teacher of over ten years, I have a background in teaching English pre further education. I currently do outreach work in local schools and FE providers. I am working closely with the English Association on school outreach and work with 4 schools providing resources and workshops. I also do workshops for staff - mainly on technology for teaching and learning. I work with the English and Media Association to provide career development sessions to teaching staff.
Qualifications: Certificate of Governance (2010), QTS (GTP) 2008, PGCHE (2017), Fellow HEA (2017).
Services
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Other
Charity work with the Donor Conception Network - local coordinator and welcomer