School of Social and Political Science

Research interests

My research is grounded in a commitment to social justice and ethical engagement, and draws together gender, reproductive health, and forced migration, in order to analyse the relationship between reproductive and migrant justice. My work illuminates how practices and ideologies of gender, motherhood, and reproduction are centred in processes of migration and asylum.

I am currently working on two research projects:

1. PI on ESRC New Investigator Grant project Maternity, Migration, and Asylum in Scotland (MAMAS)

This project is a major new social science led investigation into how pregnancy and motherhood affect refugee and asylum-seeking women's experiences of migration and settlement in Scotland, with implications for how we understand the gendering of migration and asylum across Europe and beyond. Refugee and asylum-seeking women face obstacles accessing healthcare and support, and experience significantly higher rates of maternal mortality, mental illness, and social isolation. Yet little is understood about the ways in which pregnancy and motherhood shape how women navigate asylum and settlement. This project will use a reproductive justice framework to examine the intersection of gender, reproduction and asylum in Scotland, and the ways in which these three axes produce and shape one another.

2. Co-I on ESRC GCRF Protracted Displacement project Improving healthcare at the intersection of gender and protracted displacement amongst Somali and Congolese refugees and IDPs (DiSoCo)

PhD Students

Dr Alysa Ghose,  Espiritista-as-Woman, Woman-as-Mother: The Gendering of Practice in Espiritismo Cruzado. (completed 2019)

Dr Megan Douglas, Managing Subjectivities in Contexts of Displacement: An Ethnography of Self-settlement among Congolese in Nairobi, Kenya (completed 2022)

Dr Janet Perkins, Medicalised maternities, markets and moralities: Navigating a shifting health care terrain in Bangladesh (completed 2023)

Ting Ting Shum, TB Control in China

Leah Eades, After the Eighth: Abortion and the Politics of Reproduction in Post-Repeal Ireland

Tara Pollak, Reproducing Loss: An Investigation into Pregnant Bodies and Bereavement in the Lothians, Scotland

Ava Muhr, The Intersection of COVID-19 and Immigration Surveillance in Philadelphia

Julia Fernandez-Molina, An ethnographic study of reproductive experiences among recently migrated, undocumented and asylum seeking women in the UK

Topics interested in supervising

I am interested in supervising research students working on topics that relate to my research interests.

If you are interested in being supervised by Lucy Lowe, please see the links below (open in new windows) for more information:

• PhD in African Studies
• PhD in Social Anthropology
• PhD in International Development
• MSc (R) Social Anthropology