In her dissertation, “Who Owns the Means of Reproduction? On the Political Economy of (In-)Fertility”, Irina Herb examines how fertility is entangled with global inequalities and capitalist regimes of value creation. She traces key developments such as the financialization of fertility treatments, the rise of techno-eugenic practices, and the outsourcing of pregnancy to the Global South. Recently, this latter line of inquiry led her to the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, where she conducted research as a fellow.
She studied Sociology at the Georg-August University of Göttingen and International Relations at the University of Oxford. She worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Diversity Research (Göttingen) and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (Göttingen) and spend research visits at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Leipzig). Following her studies, she worked as a researcher at a think tank on environmental policies.
Irina Herb is interested in Marxist theories of social reproduction, reproductive justice and reproductive technologies, and (neo-)colonialism, as well as social reproduction in the context of fascism. She publishes both in academic journals and in newspapers.
