Centre For Family Research

Educational background and work history

My first degree at Cambridge was in zoology and then I proceeded to do a Ph.D. at the Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour at Madingley on the maternal behaviour of the golden hamster (1965), supervised by Robert Hinde and Alan Parkes. During my time as a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Biology at Princeton and the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard, I shifted my attention to maternal behaviour in our own species. Returning to Cambridge, and with generous support from the Nuffield Foundation, I set up an observational follow-up study of mothers and babies with Judy Dunn. As this project grew, and others joined the group to do the associated research, the nucleus of what became the Medical Psychology Unit and subsequently the Centre for Family Research was formed. My own research increasingly focused on family life with studies of antenatal and neonatal care and of children and divorce. With the coming of the ‘new genetics’ in the late 1980s I began studies of families and the emerging genetic technologies.

Since my retirement from the Directorship of the Centre for Family Research in 2005, I have continued to carry out research and supervise Ph.D. students in the Centre.

Current research

Genetic and reproductive technologies and families

My research has focused on the meaning of the ‘genetic connection’ in families using ARTs and, especially collaborative reproduction.

I have been a co-editor (with John Appleby and Guido Pennings) of a collected volume, Reproductive Donation, Practices, Policy and Bioethics which is now with the publishers, Cambridge University Press. The second volume in this series, which is funded through our Wellcome Trust Enhancement Award, is now in preparation, We are Family? Perceptions of Relatedness in Assisted Conception Families.

I am working on a major review of the concept and practice of geneticisation with Paul Martin (Nottingham University) and Kane Weiner (Manchester University).

A social history of reproductive and genetic technologies

My current work in this long term project concerns a history of the regulation of artificial insemination from the court (Tribunal of Bordeaux, 1883) which severely rebuked a doctor who had used artificial insemination for acting ‘contrary to the natural law’ and the ‘Non licence’ from the Papal Office in 1897, to the regulatory regime proposed by the Warnock Committee in 1984.

Research ethics

Following a book on consent (The limits of consent, edited by O. Corrigan and others, Oxford University Press, 2009), my work had turned to the issue of the return of individual results to research participants.

I have carried out an ethical review of the use of fMRI and DNA analysis for the 1958 birth cohort study.

I am Vice-Chair of the UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council and a member of the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Human Tissue Management Committee.

Other activities

I continue to supervise some Ph.D. students and teach some M.Phil students.

I am Vice Chair of the UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council. I am also a member of the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Human Tissue Management Committe.

In 2009 I completed my 6 year term as a member of the Ethics and Law Committee of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority.

Publications

Books; Current Research & Selected Publications