Cis O'Boyle in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
Cis O’Boyle is an artist-in-residence at King’s College London. Working in collaboration with Lucy van de Wiel, Lecturer in Global Health & Social Medicine, Cis will be developing an immersive experience to introduce new ways of building communities that can respond to current challenges to reproductive freedom.
Reproductive Justice After Roe
After the recent overturning of Roe v Wade and on the cusp of the most significant revision of UK fertility law (HFEA), we propose a creative collaboration focusing on Reproductive Justice between Cis O’Boyle, founder of artist collective Idle Women (arts and social justice organisation, founded in 2015, specialised in creative space-building), and Lucy van de Wiel, lecturer in GHSM and founder of the Reproduction Research Cluster (RRC).
We aim to develop a creative collaboration culminating in a ‘Reproduction Immersion’ experience with an estimated 140 participants. The Reproduction Immersion is an experiment in using lighting, interactive installations and immersive design to create an alternative space that invites a reimagining of reproductive justice that exceeds the individual frame, and emerges from collective engagement.
Created in the tradition of ephemeral feminist spaces and “creative making of relations” (see 14, Buser), and in collaboration with artists, academics and community organisations such as “Decolonising Contraception,” we seek to create and theorise how the collective informs reproductive justice (research) in this urgent political moment. By offering an immersive, interactive visual experience, we introduce new ways of building strategic, interdisciplinary and joyful communities that can collectively respond to current challenges to reproductive freedom.
Project team
Dr Lucy van de Wiel is a Lecturer and Postgraduate Research Director in Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. She has founded and is chair of the Reproduction Research Cluster at King’s. Her research focuses on the critical analysis of new reproductive technologies such as egg freezing and data-driven embryo selection as well as the role of telemedical abortion in the post-Roe landscape. She is the author of Freezing Fertility: Oocyte Cryopreservation and the Gender Politics of Aging (New York University Press, 2020). Freezing Fertility has inspired a feature documentary of the same title produced by VPRO Backlight.
Cis O’Boyle is founder and creative director of idle women an arts, environment and social justice collaboration. She works closely with ecologies to transform space and realise narratives that are both accessible and meaningful. Cis trained at The Bartlett UCL in Built Environment and specialises in site-specific relational design.