On the 21st of February 2015, the Symposium ‘Feminist Perspectives on Medical Bodies’ was held, co-hosted by the Legal Intersections Research Centre, the Feminist Research Network and the Forum on Human Rights Research. The symposium featured an exciting lineup of speakers from UOW and other Australian universities, and across the disciplines of Law, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, History, and Cultural Studies. Speakers included two keynotes: Professor Catherine Waldby (USyd) and Professor Isabel Karpin (UTS).

The event provided an excellent opportunity for feminist scholars to present their work and engage in important discussions around the ethics, power, and politics of the transformations and constructions of bodies in contemporary medicine. Presenters engaged with the themes through a broad range of contemporary examples including animal to human transplantation, vaginal cosmetic surgery, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, breast reconstruction, sterilisation and in vitro fertilisation.