ADI postdoc receives elite scientist award

Postdoc, PhD Ayo Wahlberg from the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen has received the elite scientist award 'Sapere Aude Young Researcher award' from the Danish Council for Independent Research. He has been granted an amount of 2.277.830 DKK for his research project entitled "Exchanging ‘good' life - socio-technical imaginaries in a Chinese sperm bank"

The project explores  how scientists working in a Chinese sperm bank relate their daily work and routines in the laboratory to broader national concerns around reproduction - whether or not to reproduce, who should reproduce, how to reproduce? The ethical and social implications of, for example, China's one-child policy have been widely debated and explored. The research, on the other hand, aims to examine how reproductive scientists reflect on their work in relation to national aspirations, for example, to control population quantity and improve population quality. That is to say, the aim is to examine how the practice of reproductive science in China might be moored in particular 'socio-technical imaginaries' - "collectively imagined forms of social life and socialorder reflected in the design and fulfilment of nation-specific scientific and/or technological projects" (Jasanoff and Kim 2009).