Miranda Marks is a Research Associate and visiting intern at the Centre of Cultures for Reproduction, Technologies and Health (CORTH) at the University of Sussex. Along with engaging with the centre’s activities and members, she is helping to coordinate the Blood Narratives meeting in June and the 2018 Annual Report.

Ms. Marks is a master’s candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Leipzig in Germany, but is originally from the United States. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts in 2012 with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Anthropology and Gender Studies. Her academic foci, and the additional liberal arts course load, gave a thorough understanding of feminist, intersectional academia from an interdepartmental standpoint. Subjects of interest included emergency contraception and conscientious objection, miscarriage, sexual economies, and abortion. After graduating early with honors, she worked as a program coordinator in an environmental non-profit, increasing student and female participation in their two bi-annual conferences, editing the conference proceedings and publishing the State by State Survey on environmental cleanup levels.

Her reproductive and medical interest has continued throughout her master’s degree at Leipzig, with theoretical topics including rape and the (non)use sexual assault kits, fetal personhood and feminist ideologies in miscarriage support groups, the commodification and pro-life ideologies of ultrasound technologies. She is currently conducting research on the intrauterine device (IUD) and nulliparous women globally under 35’s experiences and understandings of the device. Coming from a feminist standpoint, she is gathering in-depth narratives to see how this newly emerging group of IUD patients and users engage with the device, and its’ effects on their lives.