(Mis)Conceptions
A Fertility Conversations Card Deck
Content Warning
The (Mis)Conceptions Project uses creative interdisciplinary methods to research experiences of pregnancy indeterminacy, past and present. Some of the themes may be difficult for some site-visitors. Subjects include reference to pregnancy complications, infertility and miscarriage.
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Project
(Mis)Conceptions: A Cultural History of Pregnancy Indeterminacy is an AHRC-funded research project looking at pregnancy ambiguity. This ambitious creative project combines archival research with artistic process and an embedded public engagement programme to alter perceptions of the (non)reproductive body, past, present, and future.
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Ambiguity around pregnancy is a significant but under-researched phenomenon both in history and today, although one which is significantly culturally repressed. This project concerns itself less with the outcomes of pregnancy (whether birth or otherwise), and more with the experiential aspect of indeterminacy connected with the experiences of waiting and not knowing, hoping and expecting without guarantees.
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In Misconceptions, we explore historical materials to see how these experiences have been shared and shifted in the past, asking how history can shed a light on pregnancy ambiguity today.
Artworks on (Mis)Conceptions website are the works of artist Anna Burel, all rights reserved
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Who we Are
Principal Investigator - Isabel Davis
Isabel is a senior academic with expertise in the field of reproductive history. She leads the Collections and Culture research theme at the Natural History Museum, London. She is the author of a book, Conceiving Histories: Trying for Pregnancy Past and Present (MIT Press forthcoming 2025).
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Visual Artist - Anna Burel
Anna is an experienced visual artist with interests in women’s history, including in medical experience. She has been collaborating with Isabel Davis since 2015 and is the illustrator of Conceiving Histories.
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Public Engagement Officer - Anya Gleizer
Anya is a researcher in human geography and a performance artist. She directs the Art, Biodiversity and Climate research network at the University of Oxford, and her interests, both artistic and scientific lie in cultural responses to ecological crisis. Community mobilisation and engagement rest at the core of her artistic practice.