Global finance capital is reshaping fertility clinics into transnational corporate groups, introducing new metrics and logics that determine which reproductive technologies get funded and which do not. This matters because the financialisation of fertility is not just about money—it changes how fertility practices are understood, managed, and prioritised, shifting power relations within the sector and steering innovation toward projects that align with speculative finance. The project will analyse three case studies that may transform reproduction: automated IVF, in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), and the abortion pill mifepristone used as contraception. By examining these innovations, the research will reveal the material realities and ideological shifts emerging as finance itself becomes a reproductive technology—propelling certain visions of fertility into the future while disenabling others. If successful, this work could reshape how policymakers, clinicians, and the public understand the forces quietly driving reproductive medicine, exposing the financial infrastructures that determine which technologies become available and to whom.
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The Speculative Fertilities project aims to transform the social study of reproduction by analysing the intersection of the financial and fertility sectors as a key site of reproductive politics. The fertility sector is increasingly reshaped by global finance capital, which drives the transformation of independent clinics into transnational groups, while introducing new logics, metrics and infrastructures to its professionals. What is at stake in this financialisation of fertility is more than funding alone; it also introduces interpretative frames through which fertility practices may be understood and managed, shifts the power relations within the sector and selectively drives reproinnovation projects that align with the logics of speculative finance. Using qualitative methods, this study will analyse three case studies that may transform the future of reproduction, including automated IVF, in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) and mifepristone (abortion pill) as contraception. By analysing these three complementary case studies of (non)reproductive innovations, this project will examine the new material realities and ideological shifts emerging with the financialisation of fertility that position specific new technologies as the promise of speculative reproductive futures. In other words, this project approaches finance as itself a reproductive technology that propels certain visions of fertility into the future, while disenabling others.
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