Sarah Franklin facts for kids

Sarah Franklin (born 1960) is an American anthropologist. An anthropologist is a scientist who studies human societies and cultures. Sarah Franklin has made big contributions to understanding feminism (equal rights for all genders), gender studies (how gender affects people), cultural studies (how culture shapes us), and how new technologies affect families and society.

She has studied things like IVF (a way to help people have babies), cloning (making an exact copy of something), embryology (the study of how living things develop before birth), and stem cell research (using special cells to grow new tissues). Her work looks at how these new technologies change family relationships and our understanding of life.

In 2001, she became the first professor in the UK to focus on the anthropology of science. Later, she became a professor at the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge.

Her Journey in Learning

Sarah Franklin went to Smith College and graduated in 1982. She also earned several master's degrees and a PhD. She studied Women's Studies at the University of Kent and Anthropology at New York University. Her PhD is from the University of Birmingham.

She was one of the first anthropologists to study how new ways of having babies affect people and families.

What She Studies

Sarah Franklin has written and edited many books and over 150 articles. These writings are about new ways of having babies and genetic technologies. She has led many big research projects. These projects look at how new reproductive and genetic technologies affect society and culture.

Her research has received support from many important groups. In 2010, she became a Fellow of the Society of Biology. This means she was recognized for her important work in biology. In 2017, she became a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2021, she was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy. These are big honors for her work.

Books She Has Written

• Biological Relatives: IVF, stem cells and the future of kinship, Duke University Press, 2013.
• Dolly Mixtures: the remaking of genealogy, Duke University Press, 2007.
• Born and Made: an ethnography of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, (co-authored with Celia Roberts), Princeton University Press, 2006.
• Remaking Life and Death: towards an anthropology of the biosciences, (co-edited with Margaret Lock), SAR Press, 2003.
• Relative Values: reconfiguring kinship studies, Duke 2001 (coedited with Susan McKinnon).
• Global Nature, Global Culture, (co-authored with Celia Lury and Jackie Stacey), Sage, 2000.
• Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power and Technological Innovation, (co-edited with Helena Ragone), UPenn Press, 1998.
• Embodied Progress: a cultural account of assisted conception, Routledge, 1997.
• The Sociology of Gender, Edward Elgar, 1996.
• Technologies of Procreation: kinship in the age of assisted conception, (co-authored with Jeanette Edwards, Eric Hirsch, Frances Price and Marilyn Strathern), Manchester University Press, 1993. Second Edition, Routledge, 1999.
• Off-Centre: feminism and cultural studies, (co-edited with Celia Lury and Jackie Stacey), Harper Collins, 1991.