Veronika Siegl is a social anthropologist and gender studies scholar interested in the intersecting questions of ethics, inequality and autonomy in the context of (reproductive) medicine.

In her postdoc project, Veronika explores the negotiation of life and death in the context of selective pregnancy termination in Austria – against the background of medical discourses and technologies, socio-cultural understandings of health and dis-/ability, prognostic uncertainties, the lack of clear legal guidelines as well as the visceral materiality of the dead/dying foetus.

Her PhD project (at the University of Bern) focused on commercial surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine and analysed a surrogacy market characterised by secrecy, distrust, and anonymous business relationships. In the subsequent monograph “Intimate Strangers” (Cornell UP, 2023), Veronika scrutinises the ethical labour of making and circulating “truths”, invested by surrogacy participants in order to grapple with the moral ambiguity of surrogacy. These truths form an integral and indispensable part of the surrogacy market, lubricating its expansion into intimate spheres of life that play out on women's bodies as mothers and workers.

Her research interests include:

  • Medical anthropology
  • Intimate labour/ intimate economies
  • Assisted reproduction, reproductive rights & motherhood
  • Feminism & intersectionality
  • Morality & ethics
  • Affects & emotions
  • Migration, (anti-)racism & social movements
  • Qualitative methods & research ethics
  • Regional focus: Europe/ Eastern Europe

 

 

Buchcover
Zooming in on commercial surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine, Intimate Strangers addresses market expansion into the intimate spheres of life that play out on women's bodies as mothers and workers.Veronika Siegl follows the inner workings of a surrogacy market marked by secrecy, distrust, and anonymous business relationships. She explores intended mothers' anxious struggles for a child in light of stigmatized infertility and the aggressive biopolitics of motherhood; the uncertain but pragmatic pathways in and out of fertility clinics as surrogates navigate harsh economic realities and resist being objectified or morally judged; and the powerful role of agents and doctors who have found a profitable niche in nurturing and facilitating other people's existential hopes. Intimate Strangers discusses these issues against the backdrop of ultra-conservatism and moral governance in Russia, the rising international popularity of the Ukrainian surrogacy market, and the pervasiveness of neo-liberal ideologies and individualized notions of reproductive freedom.

Spring Semester 2018

Gibt es eine feministische Ethnographie? Epistemologie, Positionalität und Parteilichkeit in der feministischen Anthropologie

Autumn Semester 2018

Global Intimate Economies (Gender Studies)

Spring Semester 2019

Fieldwork and its ethical challenges