Freezing Fertility: A Cultural Analysis of Oocyte Cryopreservation and Ageing

Lucy van de Wiel | Supervisors Mieke Bal, José van Dijck and Esther Peeren | University of Amsterdam 2011-2015

The basis of my research is the triangulation of the technology of oocyte cryopreservation, its representation in the popular imagination and a concept that is surprisingly undertheorised in the study of culture: ageing.  Reshuffling the abilities of the reproductive body, oocyte cryopreservation reveals the modes of thinking employed to give cultural and political shape to biotechnologies and the bodies they engage with. Given the recent development and implementation of oocyte cryopreservation, I propose a unique and topical project that will be the first book-length study within the humanities of a technology that potentially has far-reaching consequences on contemporary thinking about female fertility and ageing. Taking oocyte cryopreservation and the reproductive body as starting point, my project will approach 'ageing' as a cultural construct by positioning it in a media and historical framework, developing it in relation to the theoretical concepts of performativity and corporeality, temporality, spatiality and integrating these notions within globalised techno-human networks.

• NICA - Freezing Fertility

Bio

Lucy van de Wiel is a funded PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, under the supervision of Mieke Bal, José van Dijck and Esther Peeren. Her research focuses on the changing understanding of ageing and the reproductive body as displayed in public, political and medical discourses surrounding oocyte cryopreservation. It is the first book-length cultural study on the technology of freezing human eggs.

Lucy holds a BA (English Language and Culture, cum laude) and Research MA (Cultural Analysis, cum laude) from the University of Amsterdam. She pursued postgraduate studies as a HSP and Fulbright grantee in Rhetorics at the University of California, Berkeley and was Graduate Research Assistant of Professor Judith Butler. Lucy did an internship at UNESCO, Paris, worked for the executive boards of the UvA, VU and has been a 3-year member of the accreditation committee of research masters for the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Prior to the start of the PhD project, she graduated with distinction in the MA Film Curating at the London Film School and London Consortium, University of London.

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