Postgraduate Profile
Ms Emma Warren
PhD Candidate, School of Humanities & Social Science
Discipline: Sociology
Email: Emma.Warren@newcastle.edu.au
Campus: Callaghan Campus, Newcastle
Current Research
Title of Research/Thesis: 'The Procreation Contract: Elective Childlessness and Citizenship in Twentieth Century Australia and the West
Supervisors: Dr Lisa Featherstone (Principle) and Dr James Bennett (Secondary)
Abstract: My current research examines pronatalist discourses on the social ‘contract’ to procreate and how these discourses shape responses to elective childlessness, from the 1930s until the late twentieth century. It considers attitudes to compulsory parenthood, citizenship and childlessness in pronatalist Australian governmental policy (eg.the 'baby bonus'), legislation and wider societal attitudes.
The Australian experience will be studied within comparative interdisciplinary studies of Western trends towards elective childlessness with a particular focus on discourses of whiteness, gender and morality. Of particular focus are attitudes to the bachelor and male elective childlessness, which have to date been under-interrogated.
Qualifications
- Bachelor of Arts (Honours Class 1), University of Newcastle.
Awards and Prizes
2011 Honours Thesis awarded the Ruth Higgins Prize and the University of Newcastle Establishment Group Prize.
Research Activities
July 2012 'Problematizing the childless male: the working man, the family wage and the citizen father' at the Australian Historical Association Conference in Adelaide.
Memberships of Professional Associations
- Member of the Editorial Collective for Lilith: A Feminist History Journal
- Member Australian Women's History Network.
- Member of Australian Historical Association
Employment
- 2010 - present Tutor in Australian History.
- 2011 - present Research Assistant in FEDUA (various schools).