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.
The symposium "Reproductive Health in Fragile Democracies: Bodies, Technologies and Futures", which will take place at the Pauls Stradiņš Medicine History Museum on June 8–9, 2026, launches the public program of the exhibition “The Unaccountables”. The symposium addresses reproduction as an experience shaped by medicine, politics, the moral economy of care, and everyday life. At its core are questions about how reproductive technologies and practices create space for care, belonging, and self-determination, while also reinforcing inequality, normativity, and social exclusion.
The symposium brings together international researchers from the social sciences, humanities, policy studies, and related fields from Europe, North America, and other parts of the world. The program includes panels on reproductive governance, rights and justice, intimate care practices, embodied experience, as well as the value of “non-reproductive” lives, highlighting aging, disability, and care relationships as essential forms of sustaining society.
Panel discussions will examine diverse regional and global contexts – from Latvia and Europe to India, Pakistan, and the United States – highlighting how reproduction becomes a central site where boundaries of belonging, social value, and future possibilities are defined. In this way, the symposium serves as a platform for research and discussion that complements the exhibition, deepening its exploration of questions about normality, value, and the diversity of life in contemporary society.
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'
The symposium will be held in English in a hybrid format—both in person (free admission) and online.
Apply to attend the symposium in person by filling out the registration form
The number of places is limited.
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).
