Hope and Fear for New Human Life Event
- Time:
- 13:00 - 15:00
- Date:
- 23 November 2016
- Venue:
- Freemantle and Shirley Community Centre
For more information regarding this event, please email Mary Andrew at M.J.Andrew@soton.ac.uk .
Event details
Join us for Hope and Fear for New Human Life, a panel discussion with four speakers from across the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Southampton whose research explores pregnancy, parenting and birth from different perspectives. The session will include time for the audience to share their thoughts and questions. Pregnancy and birth is a time of hope for the future. But that hope can often be accompanied by fear: fear that something will go wrong during pregnancy and birth, fear of mothers and fathers that they are not doing a good job, fear from society as a whole that parents will not do a good job. These hopes and fears may lead us to make mistakes in our assessment of risks or our judgments of parental behaviour. This session explores the way we think about pregnancy and parenting, considering representations of parenting, pregnancy and childbirth in literature, media and social media. The researchers involved would like to invite new parents to attend with their babies – audience members need not worry about moving about, being noisy and feeding as necessary. Older children are also welcome, but please be aware that the event will include discussion visual depictions of birth, breastfeeding etc… Toys and a play area, changing rooms and refreshments will be provided. And as with all Human World Festival events, attendance is free and open to everyone- be sure to book online now to secure your place. For further information about the Human Worlds Festival please follow this link: http://www.humanworldsfestival.com
Speaker information
Dr Elselijn Kingma,Dr Elselijn Kingma is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Southampton. Between completing her PhD in Cambridge in 2008 and joining Southampton in 2013, Elselijn held positions at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda (USA); King's College London, and Cambridge. Elselijn's has research interests in philosophy of medicine, philosophy of biology, metaphysics and applied ethics. From 2016 she is Principal Investigator on a five year, 1.2 million Euro ERC Starting Grant entitled 'Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy'. Elselijn also has a part-time appointment as Socrates Professor in Philosophy and Technology in the Humanist Tradition, at the University of Eindhoven (NL). Before studying Philosophy, Elselijn obtained undergraduate degrees in Clinical Medicine (2004) and Cognitive & Neuro Psychology (2004) at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands.
Dr Fiona Woollard,Dr Fiona Woollard is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton. I am happy to supervise students in normative and applied ethics, in the philosophy of pregnancy and motherhood and in the philosophy of sex. Fiona Woollard joined Philosophy in September 2010. She completed her PhD at the University of Reading in 2008 and then held a temporary lectureship at the University of Sheffield for two years. She has research interests in normative ethics, applied ethics and the philosophy of sex and pregnancy. She has published on topics including the distinction between doing and allowing harm, climate change and the non-identity problem, the moral significance of numbers, pornography and the norm of monogamy. Fiona's monograph on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing is available from Oxford University Press. The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing states that doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. Fiona defends the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, arguing that this doctrine is necessary if aything is to genuinely belong to person - even that person's body. The monograph also explores the relationship between the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing and general ethical theories and its implications for our duties to aid distant strangers in severe need. Fiona is now working on two new research projects. The first project explores the Doctrine of Double Effect and the moral significance of intentions. The second explores the moral and epistemological implications of considering the experience of pregnancy. She has recently been awarded a University of Southampton 'Adventures in Research Grant' with Dr Elselijn Kingma for their research project, Taking Pregnancy Seriously: in metaphysics, ethics and epistemology.