Dr Aimee Middlemiss
Discipline: Sociology and Philosophy
Research Centre/Unit: Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health
Project Summary
Doctoral Thesis: The reproductive politics of second trimester pregnancy loss in England
Awarded July 2021
This thesis was a feminist examination of women’s experiences of second trimester pregnancy loss involving labour and birth in South West England. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with 31 women, it analysed second trimester pregnancy loss as a distinct phenomenon produced by the interaction of biomedical and governance discourses, and enacted on the bodies of pregnant women. It showed how an alternative English kinship ontology of pregnancy which centres embodied personhood is agentially used by some women as resistance to the erasure of their gestational kin and person-making work.
Publications:
Middlemiss, A L (2024) Invisible Labours: The reproductive politics of second trimester pregnancy loss in England. New York, Oxford. Berghahn Books. Open Access here https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/MiddlemissInvisible
Middlemiss, A. L., Boncori, I., Brewis, J., Davies, J. & Newton, V. L. (2023). Employment leave for early pregnancy endings: A biopolitical reproductive governance analysis in England and Wales. Gender, Work & Organization. Online First, Open Access at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gwao.13055.
Middlemiss, A L & Kilshaw, S (2023) Further hierarchies of loss: Tracking relationality in pregnancy loss experiences. Omega Journal of Death and Dying. Online First, Open Access at https://doi.org/10.1177/00302228231182273.
Middlemiss, A L (2021) Too big, too young, too risky: How diagnosis of the foetal body determines trajectories of care for the pregnant woman in pre-viability second trimester pregnancy loss. Sociology of Health and Illness. Online First. Open Access at doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13404.
Middlemiss, A L (2020) Pregnancy remains, infant remains, or the corpse of a child? The incoherent governance of the dead foetal body in England. Mortality. Open Access at: doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2020.1787365
Conference Papers:
Middlemiss, A L 2022 Kinship as an ontology of resistance after second trimester pre-viability pregnancy loss in England. American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting ‘Unsettling Landscapes’, 9th November 2022.
Middlemiss, A L 2021 Kinship time and the dead foetal person. Centre for Death and Society Annual Conference, 11th June 2021.
Middlemiss, A L 2019 'When it's happened, come and get me': the marginalization of Second Trimester pregnancy loss in English healthcare. Presented at: XI AFIN International Conference: Towards Reproductive (In)justice? Mobilities, technologies, labourings and decisions. Granada, Spain. 6 September 2019.
Middlemiss, A L 2019 The researcher as interdisciplinary agent: Feminist research into second trimester pregnancy loss in England. Presented at: Sociology Philosophy and Anthropology PGR Conference: Making SPAce, 16 May 2019.
Middlemiss, A L, 2019 Who counts as a mother, and what counts as a baby? Challenging discourses around Second Trimester pregnancy loss in England. Presented at: BSA Annual Conference: Challenging Social Hierarchies and Inequalities, 25 April 2019
Middlemiss, A L, 2018 How medical and legal discourse in England puts the foetal body at the centre of pregnancy. Presented at: BSA Human Reproduction Study Group Annual Conference: Reproduction and the law: transformations, responsibilities and uncertainties in the 21st Century, 24 May 2018
Other talks:
Middlemiss, A L, 2021 Resistance and agency in second trimester pre-viability pregnancy loss, Open Thanatology Group, Open University, 24th November 2021.
Middlemiss, A L, 2020 Beyond obstetric violence: the medical care of women experiencing second trimester pregnancy loss as ontological boundary work. Presented at: Health Medicine and Agency Network, CRASSH, University of Cambridge, 11 February 2020.
Middlemiss, A L, 2018 Pre-24 weeks pregnancy loss: Some sociocultural, ethical, and legal considerations of birth registration. Presented to the UK Department of Health Pregnancy Loss Review Advisory Board, 19th June 2018.
Supervisory Team
Dr Katharine Tyler, Anthropology.
Dr Naomi Hawkins, Law.
formerly: Professor Susan Kelly, Sociology.
Wider Research Interests
Previous Projects:
‘Knowing they’re there’: Pregnant women’s use of Doppler ultrasound devices to listen to the foetal heart at home.
Foetal Doppler technology, used in midwifery and obstetrics to assess the presence and rate of a foetal heartbeat, is now widely commercially available in the UK. This project was an exploration of how and why pregnant women use the technology in a domestic setting, drawing on qualitative interviews with women in Cornwall and submitted as part of my MRes in Science and Technology Studies at the University of Exeter, 2017.
The study concluded with some recommendations for policy change regarding advice on domestic foetal Doppler use, especially in relation to calls to ban the devices for home use, and on foetal listening by midwives
Publications:
Middlemiss, A. L. (2020) ‘It Felt like the Longest Time of my Life’: Using Foetal Dopplers at Home to Manage Anxiety about Miscarriage. In Kilshaw, S and Borg, K (Eds) Navigating miscarriage: Social, medical and conceptual perspectives (pp 160-183). Oxford, New York: Berghahn. https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/KilshawNavigating
Conference Papers and other talks:
Middlemiss, A L 2021 Market solutions, moral panic, and managing privatised anxiety in the home use of fetal Dopplers. BPAS Centre for Reproductive Research and Communication, 8th November 2021. Invited online talk and panel discussion at the event ‘Autonomy, trust and surveillance – the role of technology in reproductive healthcare.’
Middlemiss, A L, 2017 The domestic foetal Doppler at the borders of pregnancy: How listening to the foetal heartbeat at home both reifies and challenges the medicalisation of pregnancy. SWDTP Conference 2017 - Research in a Changing World: Critical Encounters, Wednesday 8th November
Authored Publications/Reports
Middlemiss, A L (2017) How some methodologies of participation fail to address the problem of the political relationship between researcher and researched in the social sciences., TOR The Open Review of the Social Sciences, 3, 7-11
Aimee Middlemiss (2016) #SaveAnthropologyAlevel: the campaign which tried to retain anthropology in British schools. , Teaching Anthropology, Vol 6 (2016): A-level Anthropology: A retrospective , 15-19
Aimee Middlemiss (13th March 2018) The Fetal Dopplers Bill is based on limited evidence about pregnant women’s use of the device, LSE British Politics and Policy Blog
