Ricerca
IMPACT HAU is a comparative anthropological study of impact investing and sustainable finance. Inspired by Marcel Mauss’s classic use of the Maori concept of hau, the ‘spirit of the gift’, it focuses on the designers, traders and beneficiaries of impact bonds to produce an empirically driven analysis of the multiple moralities of global finance.
Ethnographic case studies compiled by our researchers provide grounded, detailed accounts of the design and implementation of impact investing in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. In this research, we analyze the current consensus among global policymakers and business leaders concerning the role of finance in solving global problems, and we test the theories of sustainability that underpin hopes for a socially inclusive green economy.
EU BORDER CARE is the acronym for a 5-year research project funded by an ERC Starting Grant (2015-2020) ‘Intimate Encounters in EU Borderlands: Migrant Maternity, Sovereignty and the Politics of Care on Europe’s Periphery. EU Border Care is a comparative study of the politics of maternity care among undocumented migrants on the EU’s peripheries. Empirical analysis of personal and institutional relations of care and control in the context of pregnancy and childbirth will support an innovative critique of the moral rationale underpinning healthcare delivery and migration governance in some of Europe’s most densely crossed borderlands in France, Greece, Italy, and Spain.
IN VITRO: As soon as in vitro fertilization (IVF) was established in 1970, the practical legal and ethical question of embryos cryopreservation emerged. A single IVF cycle creates numerous embryos and, generally, a greater number of those that will be used for conception. Across the world, stored embryos are described as problematic, because a significant proportion of these are labelled as “surplus” for reproductive needs and remain cryopreserved indefinitely. These “extra embryos”, as biovalues, may be transferred immediately to other patients’ wombs, disposed of, or cryopreserved for embryo donation. It takes two forms: donation for research and donation for family building purposes. InVitroFutures is a critical and innovative anthropological
analysis of embryo adoption from a comparative perspective between Canada and Spain. The project is built around research 3 aims: 1) exploring biomedical narratives, moral discourses, and salvific logics related on embryo donation; 2) comparing the impact of social determinants such as nationality/country, bio-political institutions, gender-sexuality, class, race on embryo donation’s arrangements; 3) analyzing relatedness within embryo donation.