Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship of over 1400 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas.
Professor Sarah Franklin has been chosen as one of the new 84 academics elected Fellow of the British Academy, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the SHAPE subjects. Professor Franklin is Chair of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and her research focusses on the social aspects of reproductive and genetic technologies, IVF, cloning, embryo research, and stem cells.
In 2012 she received awards from the Wellcome Trust, ESRC, and the British Academy to establish the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (ReproSoc) which has since gone on to become one of the leading research centres in the rapidly expanding field of reproductive studies.
Welcoming the Fellows, the new President of the British Academy, Professor Julia Black FBA, said:
“As the new President of the British Academy, it gives me great pleasure to welcome this new cohort of Fellows, who are as impressive as ever and remind us of the rich and diverse scholarship and research undertaken within the SHAPE disciplines – the social sciences, humanities and the arts. I am very much looking forward to working with them on our shared interests.
“The need for SHAPE subjects has never been greater. As Britain recovers from the pandemic and seeks to build back better, the insights from our diverse disciplines will be vital to ensure the health, wellbeing and prosperity of the UK and will continue to provide the cultural and societal enrichment that has sustained us over the last eighteen months. Our new Fellows embody the value of their subjects and I congratulate them warmly for their achievement.”