Event Details

FoHR Award Holder, Dr Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, Associate Professor in Biolaw at Durham University, led two seminars with a Lancaster academic audience in October and December 2023.

Dr Romanis' first presentation on Assisted Gestation and Gender discussed the potential of future biotechnology to disrupt how we think about gendered roles in reproduction. Would access to uterus transplantation and artificial placentas make reproduction a less gendered role, or would it reinforce traditional perceptions of gender and the female body?

At the November seminar, she presented a chapter from her monograph Biotechnology, Gestation, and the Law which was published by Oxford University Press in March 2024. She outlined the key question in her chapter, entitled Novel forms of assisted gestation and legal parenthood. At birth, legal motherhood is afforded to the person who gestated (mater semper certa est (the mother is always certain)), and this is considered to be historically rooted (it is often cited to roman law), so if assisted reproductive technology is used, who is the legal parent?

Both talks prompted a lot of thought-provoking discussion, with a view for ongoing collaboration with Dr Romanis and Lancaster University research teams.