Dr Sarah Bamdad

About

Sarah completed their PhD in the Sociology Department, University of Warwick in Oct 2019. Prior to her PhD and during it, the broad areas of research Sarah was interested in were on reproductive health, reproductive justice and social inequalities. In her doctoral research, Sarah conducted a feminist clinical ethnography to explore the intersections of gender, biomedicine and religion and how they play out in shaping the everyday life of an infertility treatment clinic in Iran. Following on her research interests, Sarah is currently a Post-doc Research Fellow at the School of Anthropology and Conservation (SAC) working on a project funded by Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF): ‘Where legal is unobtainable: Abortion provision and access in Cape Town’.

In this project and under the supervision of Dr Sarah Jones, Sarah wants to analyse and examine barriers to women’s access to safe and legal abortion in South Africa, a country where abortion is legally permitted yet access to free and safe abortion has remained an empty promise. The aims and objectives of this research overlap with all the challenges specified in the GCRF, particularly with Human rights, good governance and social justice. This project perceives access to safe abortion as part of medical care and rights for all women and its free provision regardless of women’s socio-economic status paves the way for justice and a more equitable society.