Areas of Interest: Commercial Surrogacy in India, Globalization and fertility markets, Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Reproductive Justice and Birth Justice movements, Transnational Feminisms.

Committee Members: Nancy Hiemstra (Primary Advisor), Liz Montegary and Cristina Khan

Dissertation Title:  Global Fertility Markets: Regulation and Reproductive Justice

My dissertation maps the evolution of the commercial surrogacy market after the Indian government closed its borders to transnational surrogacy in 2015. The project 1) documents the impact of the international surrogacy ban, and the currently debated national ban on commercial surrogacy, on key stakeholders in the surrogacy arrangement: the fertility businesses, the infertile individuals/couples, and the surrogates; 2) examines the dynamics of stratified reproduction (Colen 1995) in the domestic surrogacy market in India now that the international surrogacy is made illegal; and 3) study the state, Indian feminist and popular cultural discourses around infertility and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) in India. It both builds on and contributes to anthropological research on infertility and ARTs in the non-western settings by examining the uneven spread of ARTs within India and the ways in which reproductive experiences of Indian citizens are stratified locally. The dissertation also draws on feminist frameworks of reproductive justice and transnational feminisms and adds to the ongoing global feminist debates around ARTs and surrogacy.