Dr Agata Ignaciuk

July - December 2021
Mail: agataignaciuk(at)ugr(dot)es

Agata Ignaciuk is an Assistant Professor at the Department of the History of Science, University of Granada (Spain). Between 2017 and 2019, she was a Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions COFUND Research Fellow at the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology. Her research focuses on gender and the history of sexual and reproductive health and rights. She is currently engaged in the research project “Catholicising Reproduction, Reproducing Catholicism: Activist Practices and Intimate Negotiations in Poland, 1930 – Present” (https://etnologia.uw.edu.pl/en/cathorep).

Research project at the Kolleg

Contraceptive Technologies in State-Socialist and Catholic Poland: A Social History

My book project examines the history of the technologies of contraception and abortion in Poland between the mid-1950s and early 1990s, from both a feminist and social history of medicine and health perspective. Using archival sources, the media, medical publications, popular medical literature, and oral history interviews, I analyse the circulation trajectories of the pill, male and female barrier methods, spermicides and abortion technologies. Abortion was legal and widely accessible during most of the second half of the twentieth century, yet actively stigmatized by large sectors of the Catholic Church, health authorities, and state-sponsored family planners. In official discourse, contraceptive products were represented as alternatives to abortion, but their availability and quality fluctuated, often in contradiction to population policies pursued by the State. While the Catholic hierarchy systematically broadcast anti-contraception messages, often linked to the alleged health risks posed by contraception, some Catholic intellectuals, and many Catholic couples chose to promote and use contraceptive technologies banned by their Church. A preference for low-technology contraceptives, such as withdrawal and the rhythm method, remained stable in Poland and at a higher level than in most other Eastern European countries. Following the histories of contraceptive technologies enables me to unfold the intersecting biopolitics of State and Church, examine the complexity of gender models proposed by these entities, and their embodiment in Polish (hetero)sexual contraceptive practices.

Main areas of research

• History of reproductive health and rights
• Social history of medicine in Europe
• Gender history (20th century)

Positions and memberships

• Deputy editor, Dynamis Journal for the History of Science, Medicine and Health
• Executive Committee member, Sociedad Española de Historia de la Medicina
• Member, Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies
• Society for the Social History of Medicine and the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health