Dr. Maria Fannin graduated with her BA degree from UK Geography and is now Senior Lecturer in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/geography/people/maria-fannin/).

In preparation for the seminar, PLEASE READ the article at this DropBox link (https://www.dropbox.com/s/njwvpqhyhfzg3q4/Fannin_Kent_2015.pdf?dl=0)

In the early 1990s, over 14,000 pregnant women in southwest England were recruited to a longitudinal birth cohort study to study the relationship between child health and the environment. This study, known to the wider public as ‘Children of the 90s,’ involved the collection of health and lifestyle data as well as biological materials from mothers and their children, including whole placentas collected at birth. This seminar will explore how the placentas collected as part of this study were transformed into scientific objects, drawing on interviews with mothers, scientists, and other curators of the tissue collection. We suggest that the value attributed to the placenta as a ‘connective tissue’ and an archive of the child’s earliest ‘environment’ tells an important story about the social and cultural imaginaries of biobanking. We also argue for greater attentiveness to the geographies of tissue collections and to the profoundly biopolitical work of these collections in the making of a study population.