Institute of Geography

Group Portrait

Dr. Laura Perler

PostDoc

Social and Cultural Geography

Phone
+41 31 684 86 05
E-Mail
laura.perler@unibe.ch
Office
315
Postal Address
University of Bern
Institute of Geography
Social and Cultural Geography
Hallerstrasse 12
CH-3012 Bern

Home

I studied social anthropology, public law and gender studies at the University of Bern. My dissertation at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) focused on transnational egg donation and reprogenetics in Spain. Since 2018 I am now working at the Social and Cultural Geography Bern and part of the coordination group for the mLab. Since October 2021 I am working on reproductive geopolitics as part of an SNF project, focusing mainly on women's reproductive biographies in the Swiss asylum process.

My research interests include (social and biological) reproduction, bioeconomies, feminist technoscience, migration, care work, and general feminist and postcolonial theories. I am also interested in qualitative methods, specifically audiovisual approaches and participant observation. My regional focus is on Spain, Latin America and Switzerland.

In my opinion, science should not be reserved for an elite circle of initiates, but should be socially relevant and understandable. Therefore, I try to make my research accessible to a wider audience. Be it through exhibitions, collaborations with artists or in media contributions.

 

Monographie von Dr. Laura Perler
Perler, Laura: Selektioniertes Leben. Eine feministische Perspektive auf die Eizellenspende.

CV

Fields of Research

  • Feminist Technoscience and Geographies of the Body
  • Medical Anthropology/Geography
  • Carework
  • reproduction
  • Science and Technology Studies
  • Migration 
  • Intimacy and globalization
  • Multi-media methods
  • Affects/Emotions

Education

2021

PhD at the university of St.Gallen. Title of dissertation: “The imaginary of the ‘healthy’ child. An Analysis of the Spanish egg donation economy“.
2016-2021 Doctoral Student in Organizational Studies and Cultural Theory, University of St.Gallen (doc.ch)
2013-2015 MA Social Anthropology and Gender Studies, University of Bern
2007-2011 BA Social Anthropology and public law, University of Bern
2010-2011 Formation "global education GLEN-Géco", including three months Internship Natitingou, Benin

Professional career

Autumn 2022 Substitution of the professorship (Prof. Dr. Carolin Schurr)

Since 2021

PostDoc position at the SNF project “Reproductive Geopolitics: Governing and Contesting In/Fertility in the Global Intimate“
2018-2021 Collaborator in Social and Cultural Geography, University of Bern
2016-2021 PhD student, University of St. Gallen
Since 2016 Scientific collaborator with Carolin Schurr
2014-2015 Tutor for Undergraduate-Course and assistant to Prof. Sabine Strasser. Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern
2013-2014 Project collaboration NFP-Project 67 "Informal Caregivers in Critical End of Life Situations", Sottas Formative Works, Fribourg.
Since 2012 Care / Family
2010-2011 Replacement Teachings in Secundary and Primary Schools
2009 Interviewer Project "Ambulante Betreuung im Alter", University of applied Sciences, departement of social work
2005-2010 Care / Night Watch / Assistance, VHD Schmitten

Publications

Jump to: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2017 | 2015 | 2013

2024

Wegelin, Milena; Perler, Laura; Abdin, Nour; Sieber, Christine; Huber, Lynn; Cignacco, Eva (2024). Reproduktive Gesundheit – die Perspektive geflüchteter Frauen in der Schweiz Eigenverlag

Perler, Laura; Schurr, Carolin; Komposch, Nora; Winkel, Mirko; Cervantez Rodríguez, Pedro Alejandro (2024). Reproductive geopolitics: Governing in/fertile bodies in Mexico’s past and present. Environment and Planning. C, Politics and space, 42(1), pp. 102-124. Sage 10.1177/23996544231182546

2023

Perler, Laura (2023). Ethische und soziale Implikationen der Eizellspende in Spanien. (In Press). Frauenarzt(12/23), pp. 830-832. publimed Medizin und Medien

Wegelin, Milena Isabel; Perler, Laura (15 September 2023). “How did she get pregnant anyway?” About the (de-)legitimisation of motherhood in the Swiss asylum regime. (Unpublished). In: Conference of the Swiss Association for Gender Studies (SAGS). Lausanne. 15.9.2023.

Wegelin, Milena Isabel; Perler, Laura (23 June 2023). Institutionelle Politiken der (Ab)wertung von Mutterschaft im schweizerischen Asylwesen. (Unpublished). In: Gosteli Gespräche 2023 "Reproduktive Gerechtigkeit. Eine interdisziplinäre Debatte über Zwang, Freiheit, Mutterschaft und Frauenbewegung". Bern. 23.6.2023.

Binisik, Derya; Stüwe, Taleo; Perler, Laura (10 March 2023). Eierstock mit Beinen? Missy Magazine

Winkel, Mirko; Schurr, Carolin; Perler, Laura; Komposch, Nora (2023). Multisensorik: Globale Intimität multisensorisch erforschen und ausstellen. In: Singer, Katrin; Schmidt, Katharina; Neuburger, Martina (eds.) Artographies – Kreativ-künstlerische Zugänge zu einer machtkritischen Raumforschung. Sozial- und Kulturgeographie: Vol. 59 (pp. 215-228). Bielefeld: transcript

Binisik, Derya; Perler, Laura; Stüwe, Taleo (2023). Wie ein Eierstock mit Beinen? Genderstudies(39), pp. 5-7. Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Geschlechterforschung, Universität Bern

Perler, Laura (2023). Selektioniertes Leben. Eine feministische Perspektive auf die Eizellenspende. Münster: Edition Assemblage

Perler, Laura; Schurr, Carolin (2023). Maison de naissance. In: Klauser, Francisco; Landolt, Sara; Müller, Martin; Schoepfer, Isabelle (eds.) In 30 Tagen durch die Schweiz. Einblicke in ungeahnte Orte (pp. 61-65). Lausanne: Helvetiq

2022

Saldaña-Tejeda, Abril; Aparicio, Alberto; González-Santos, Sandra P; Arguedas-Ramírez, Gabriela; Cavalcanti, Juliana Manzoni; Shaw, Malissa Kay; Perler, Laura (2022). Policy landscapes on human genome editing: a perspective from Latin America. Trends in Biotechnology, 40(11), pp. 1275-1278. Elsevier 10.1016/j.tibtech.2022.07.018

Perler, Laura; Schurr, Carolin (2022). Geographies of assisted reproduction: The Spanish egg donation economy as a global/intimate contact zone. Documents d'Anàlisi Geogràfica, 68(2), pp. 313-333. 10.5565/rev/dag.725

Perler, Laura (17 April 2022). Eizellenspende: nur eine Frage der Gleichberechtigung? In: Eizellenspende: nur eine Frage der Gleichberechtigung?.

Komposch, Nora; Perler, Laura (2022). Book Review: "Mehr als Selbstbestimmung! Kämpfe für reproduktive Gerechtigkeit" by Kitchen Politics (Ed.). Widerspruch - Beiträge zu sozialistischer Politik, 78, pp. 221-222. Rotpunktverlag

Perler, Laura (2022). Selektioniertes Leben. Einführung [Movie].

Perler, Laura (2022). Selektioniertes Leben. Videotagebuch [Movie].

Perler, Laura (2022). Selektioniertes Leben. Machtverhältnisse [Movie].

Perler, Laura (2022). Selektioniertes Leben. Zukunftsvisionen [Movie].

Perler, Laura (2022). Selektioniertes Leben. Genetischer Trägertest [Movie].

Siegl, Veronika; Schurr, Carolin; Perler, Laura; Bigler, Christine; Büchler, Tina (2022). Transnationale reproduktive Mobilität – empirische Befunde zu einer umstrittenen Praxis (H2R Working Paper 3/2022). Seismo 10.33058/wpuzh.2022.8865

Perler, Laura (2022). Einblicke in die Biografien von 'Spenderinnen' in Spanien. Gen-ethischer Informationsdienst (GID)(260), pp. 32-35.

2021

Perler, Laura (1 November 2021). Selektive assistierte Reproduktion. Gen-ethischer Informationsdienst (GID)(259), pp. 34-36.

Lafuente‐Funes, Sara; Perler, Laura (2021). Book Review: Freezing Fertility: Oocyte Cryopreservation and the Gender Politics of Aging. Lucy van de Wiel, New York: NYU Press, 2020, 344 pp. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 35(4), O90-O92. Wiley 10.1111/maq.12671

Perler, Laura (1 August 2021). Das Reproduktionseldorado Spanien. Die Ökonomisierung der spanischen „Eizellspende“. Gen-ethischer Informationsdienst (GID)(258), pp. 32-34.

Perler, Laura; Siegl, Veronika (28 March 2021). Gerechtigkeit auf Kosten der Eizellenspenderinnen? Gastkommentar zur Fortpflanzungsmedizin. Der Bund TA-Media

Siegl, Veronika; Bigler, Christine; Büchler, Tina; Perler, Laura; Schurr, Carolin (2021). Transnationale Reproduktive Mobilität aus der Schweiz (Stellungnahmen und Gutachten zur Fortpflanzungsmedizin). Bern: Bundesamt für Gesundheit

Perler, Laura (2021). Die Verheissung gesundes Kind. Eine Analyse der spanischen Eizellenspendeökonomie. (Submitted). (Dissertation, Universität St.Gallen, SHSS)

2020

Perler, Laura; Schurr, Carolin (2020). Intimate Lives in the Global Bioeconomy: Reproductive Biographies of Mexican Egg Donors. Body & society, 27(3), pp. 3-27. SAGE Publications 10.1177/1357034X20936326

Molas, Anna; Perler, Laura (2020). Selecting women, taming bodies? Body ontologies in egg donation practices in Spain. Tapuya: Latin American science, technology and society, 3(1), pp. 396-414. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 10.1080/25729861.2020.1781371

Perler, Laura (2020). Ein Gespräch über Feminismus mit Laura Perler. Podcast META.

2019

Perler, Laura; Schurr, Carolin (2019). Kinderwunschklinik. In: Hasse, Jürgen; Schreiber, Verena (eds.) Räume der Kindheit. Ein Glossar (pp. 173-178). Bielefeld: transcript

2017

Perler, Laura; Rickli, Francesca (2017). From Harry Potter to Jesus - A transfigurative conference report. Medizinethnologie Arbeitsgruppe Medical Anthropology in der DGSKA e.V

2015

Schurr, Carolin; Perler, Laura (17 December 2015). ‘Trafficked’ into a better future? Why Mexico needs to regulate its surrogacy industry (and not ban it). Open Democracy OpenDemocracy

Brügger, Sarah; Perler, Laura; Jaquier, Adrienne; Sottas, Beat (2015). „Dadurch, dass wir Mädchen sind, war die Erwartung von allen viel größer.“ Geschlechtsspezifische Besonderheiten der informellen Pflege. Gender : Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft, 7(2), pp. 113-129. Barbara Budrich 10.3224/gender.v7i2.19316

2013

Sottas, Beat; Brügger, Sarah; Perler, Laura (2013). Soziales und Seelsorgerisches im Vordergrund! Führung, Geld und Bildung: Was sollen Freiwillige in der Palliativversorgung wirklich? Praxis Palliative Care(20)

Projects

“Reproductive Geopolitics: Governing and Contesting In/Fertility in the Global Intimate”
Duration 2021-2025
Funding SNF project funding
Description

The overall aim of our project is to understand how uneven access to reproductive technologies reflects the valuation of certain bodies and lives. Whose bodies are reproduced in the future depends on who has access to reproductive technologies, here understood as both low-tech and high-tech technologies affecting fertility and infertility, conception and contraception, pregnancy and pregnancy termination, and birth and infanticide. 

While in the past states governed fertility through health regimes, family planning programs, and eugenics, in the present, the stratified access to reproductive technologies has resulted in a new mode of reproductive governance. The research field of reproductive geopolitics we aim to develop in this project will show how access to reproductive technologies becomes geopolitical when individuals, states, international organizations, transnational corporations, and religious and nongovernmental organizations define and contest whose bodies count as desirable for reproduction and whose bodies are denied reproduction or restricted in it. 

In my subproject, I will investigate the reproductive biographies of asylum-seeking women in Switzerland against the backdrop of current migration regimes, populist narratives about the threatened Swiss community, changing legislation, and networks of solidarity. I aim to analyze how the multiscalar asylum system in Switzerland and the resulting spatiotemporal disruptions in women’s asylum journeys complicate women’s access to reproductive technologies and how women contest access to reproductive health.

 

Reproductive Precarities: The case of Swiss-Spanish egg-provision arrangements
Duration 2016-2020
Funding Doc.ch (SNF)
Description

In my dissertation, I am investigating the practices of a transnationally operating fertility clinic in Spain. I understand the phenomenon of egg donation as a transnational market that connects different actors in a very visceral way. In this market, not only economic, medical and biological connections are important, but also very specific values. An example for this is the importance of a certain understanding of “health”, closely linked to the concept of "free choice". These visions and ideas are main vectors of the practices in the field of reproductive medicine, yet as they are perceived as a matter of fact and self-evident, they often remain imperceptible. In my dissertation, I examine a certain conceptualization of health as a significant “Sociotechnical Imaginary” (Jasanoff and Kim 2015: Dreamscapes of Modernity. Sociotechnical Imaginaries And The Fabrication Of Power) in the field of egg donation. My ethnographic field research shows how these imaginaries link future, past and present, and how bodies are normed and medicalized reproduction gets normalized through those imaginaries. The study of different point of views within the clinic also shows the extent to which the imaginaries have a stratified effect along further categories of difference. Following Jasanoff, the specific "topographies of power" (Jasanoff and Kim 2015, 18), which characterize the transnational egg donation market, become apparent. 

 

Presentations

Selection since 2015

2023  
September Perler, Laura and Milena Wegelin:“How did she get pregnant anyway?” About the (de-)legitimisation of motherhood in the Swiss asylum regime. Presentation in the panel "Shaping moral norms of “good” parenthood and parenting across the reproductive process". Conference of the Swiss Association for Gender Studies (SAGS) 2023. (15.9.2023)
June Perler, Laura und Milena Wegelin: Institutionelle Politiken der (Ab)wertung von Mutterschaft im schweizerischen Asylwesen. Vortrag an den Gosteli Gesprächen 2023 "Reproduktive Gerechtigkeit. Eine interdisziplinäre Debatte über Zwang, Freiheit, Mutterschaft und Frauenbewegung" (23.6.2023)
March Perler, Laura: "Reproductive Geopolitics – An account on Asylum seeking women and their access to reproductive health in Switzerland". Öffentlicher Vortrag im Rahmen des Forschungskolloquiums Ethnologie, Universität Luzern (21.3.2023)
January Perler, Laura: Selektioniertes Leben. Eine feministische Perspektive auf die Geographien assistierter Reproduktion. Vortrag im Rahmen des geographischen Kolloquiums, Göttingen. (10.1.2023)
Perler, Laura: Selektioniertes Leben. Eine feministische Perspektive auf die Eizellenspende. Vortrag im Rahmen des soziologischen Kolloquiums, Jena. (9.1.2023)
2022  
  Ausstellung im Kornhausforum Bern "Baby's machen. "Eizellspende" und Reproduktionspolitiken." 
Ausstellung mit Diskursprogramm "Baby's machen. "Eizellspende" und Reproduktionspolitiken." Berlin
Vida seleccionada: La economía española y la producción del 'buen futuro. Presentación. REDLIBRE. Universidad Complutense. Madrid.
Selected life. The Spanish bioeconomy of egg donation and the production of the good future. Presentation at the European Feminist Platform. Bruxelles.
2021  
Mai “El imaginario del bebé sano: La producción del ‘futuro deseable’ en la economía española de la donación de óvulos”. Vortrag an der Jahreskonferenz der Zeitschrift DAG (Documents d’Anàlisi Geogràfica). Barcelona. 27.5.2021.
„Screening pasts for healthy futures – The Spanish Egg ‘donation’ industry and the Imaginary of the ‘healthy’ child“.  Beitrag am Workshop mit Alison Kafer: “Crip Time Again: Theorizing Disability Temporalities”.  Universität Bern, IZFG. 20.5.2021
March „Die Verheissung ‘gesundes’ Kindes - Einblicke in die spanische Eizellenspendeökonomie“. Vortrag am Berner Humangeographisches Kolloquium. 16.3.2021.
2020  
December „Screening pasts for healthy futures – The Spanish Egg ‘donation’ industry and the Imaginary of the ‘healthy’ child“. Beitrag am Workshop “Temporalities of the Living”. Universität Lausanne. 4.12.2020
July Co-Organisatorin internationales BIOS-Netzwerktreffen “worlding bodies, situating technologies: geography meets feminist STS”. Juli 2020, Appenzell.
Mai (Dis)entangling the global/intimate: The logics of care in reproductive biographies. LASA conference, Mai 2020, Guadalajara, Mexico.
2019  
December Organisation Workshop „Normierte Körper - Eine Begegnung von Künstler*innen und Wissenschaftler*innen“, Dezember 2019, Universität Bern
September Negotiating subjectivity in objectifying practices: Becoming an Egg donor in times of (economic) precarity”. XI AFIN International Conference, September 2019, Granada, Spanien
2018  
  Vortrag Sommerschule „Gender and Space“, Herbberg
"Reproductive Precarities: A 'rhizomatic' Dissertation: Researching Egg Donation Arrangements between Switzerland and Spain." MAYS Konferenz, FU Berlin (Medical Anthropology Young Scholars – Konferenz)
2017  
  (mit Carolin Schurr) "Biopolitische Transfigurationen in der mexikanischen Bioökonomie", Konferenz "Transfigurationen: Medizin macht Gesellschaft macht Medizin", Universität Basel.
Co-Organisatorin internationaler Workshop „Transcultural Bodies: Geographies of Embodiment“, University of St. Gallen
2015  
  Co-organizer international workshop „The ART of reproducing difference. Discussing (in) equality in the context of reproductive travel.“ Institut für Sozialanthropologie, Universität Bern (2015)

 

 

Teaching

Current Teaching

current Supervision of BA und MA Theses
Autumn 2022 Lecture: "Orte der Globalisierung" (Bachelor)

 

Past Teaching

Spring 2022 Excursion in the city of Bern
Spring 2021 “Right to the city.” Excursion in the city of Bern.
Fall 2020 Tutorium “Spaces of Globalisation”
Fall 2017 Exercise "Ökonomien der Schönheit: transkulturelle körperliche Ästhetik zwischen Vermarktung und Schönheitschirurgie" (with Elisabeth Militz), University of St. Gallen
Fall 2014 BA Tutorial "Verwandtschaftsanthropologie", Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern