About (Mis)Conceptions
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Artworks on (Mis)Conceptions website are the works of artist Anna Burel, all rights reserved
(Mis)Conceptions is a multidisciplinary project
with a three-fold method, exploring
pregnancy indeterminacy in culture through a deck of conversation cards modelled on the European tarot:
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(1) Historical research into pregnancy ambiguity. This is presented in a forthcoming book, Conceiving Histories: Trying for Pregnancy Past and Present (MIT, 2025), and also the subject of on-going research.
Read more about Conceiving Histories HERE.
Available for pre-order on Amazon HERE.
(2) Artistic engagement and exploration of the (un)reproductive body, through embodied experience, textile, installation, and collage of archival imagery and ideas. Read more about
integration of art & research HERE.
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(3) Public engagement through online activities, workshops, and focus groups to learn from the experiences of those who deal with pregnancy ambiguity professionally or personally. We have attended and organised conferences and research workshops, alongside academic public engagement events. We have presented and gathered feedback at festivals and with community groups. We have held workshops for sonographers and fertility counsellors and shared a mass online survey on the experience of trying to conceive. All of this research has then informed the creation of the (Mis)Conception deck.
See our Public Engagement events HERE.
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About our Team
Isabel Davis is an historian with expertise in the field of reproductive history. She leads the Collections and Culture research theme at the Natural History Museum. She is the author of a forthcoming book, Conceiving Histories: Trying for Pregnancy Past and Present (MIT Press, 2025).
See LinkedIn Profile
Our Steering Committee
Lisa Baraitser is Professor of Psychosocial Theory, in the School of Social Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London and a Psychoanalyst, member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Her work is on the intersections between care, gender and temporality. She is the author of the award-winning monograph, Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption (Routledge, 2009) and Enduring Time (2017). She has recently completed a 6 year cycle of research funded by the Wellcome Trust called ‘Waiting Time’, that has investigated the relation between time and healthcare, with a particular focus on waiting.
Tracey Loughran is Professor of History at the University of Essex. Her current research aims to create an intersectional history of women’s ‘everyday health’ from the ground up, drawing on oral history interviews, Mass Observation directives, and mass-market magazines. She is the author of Shell-Shock and Medical Culture in First World War Britain (2017), and co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives (2017; with Gayle Davis), Emotion and the Researcher: Sites, Subjectivities and Relationships (2018; with Dawn Mannay), and 'Everyday Health', Embodiment, and Selfhood since 1950 (with Hannah Froom, Kate Mahoney and Daisy Payling, forthcoming). Her research interests centre on how knowledge is constructed, ‘translated’ and transformed across different disciplines and contexts, and the interaction of representation and experience in shaping experiences of gender, embodiment, and selfhood.
Tabitha Moses is interested in art as a machine for empathy. Her art practice has explored experiences of infertility, magical thinking, trauma and healing. She is currently studying Creative Arts Psychotherapy and maintains a daily drawing practice for her own wellbeing.
Dr. Robin Basu Roy is a Clinical Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at Queen Mary University of London and Barts Health NHS Trust. He has a long-standing interest in the medical humanities, particularly using the power of film to engage with the public and stimulate interdisciplinary discussion about child well-being. https://watchtalkthink.com/
Alison Perry is a midwife and doctoral research fellow based at The George Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London. Originally from Canada, she has worked on women’s health and midwifery-related projects in a wide variety of settings. She is the director of a co-facilitated global twinning project in Uganda and the creator of a novel midwifery workshop curriculum for midwives. In recent years she has gained experience of arts in health methods and theory during an awarded National Institute for Health Research pre-doctoral fellowship. She has extensive experience of public engagement, which is the subject of her PhD. Her particular interest is around storytelling as process and method in women’s health and research. Alison is also the founder of The Bridge Project which aims to inform and influence the direction of women’s health and research by bringing together researchers, clinicians, and community into dialogue and relationship.
Jennifer Pullar is a practicing artist and Science Communications Manager for the Natural History Museum, London. With a background in Fine Art Photography, Jennifer has exhibited at the Photographers Gallery, Gasworks, APT Studios, Camberwell College of Art and Paradise Row Gallery and won Bar Tur award for photography. Jennifer has worked for Central Saint Martins, the British Museum and was a Digital Trustee for the London Museum Group and is passionate about the intersection of art and science and exploring new ways of visual communication to tackle the planetary emergency.