Hello,

I’m Manon Lefèvre, an anthropologist completing my doctorate at Yale University.

My scholarship sits at the intersection of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, and the politics of reproduction.

In my dissertation research, I examine the cultural politics of lab-grown human embryos. My work follows the reproductive scientists who grow human embryos in IVF labs—within a landscape in which gestating and IVF embryos are increasingly legislated as unborn children.

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A printed image of two embryos just before they are transferred into a patient's uterus.

One year after the fall of Roe v. Wade, thirteen states define embryos as legally protected persons. Though we know these laws harm pregnant people, they also threaten the sphere of infertility medicine—where scientists fertilize eggs, grow human embryos, place them inside uteruses, freeze them in liquid nitrogen, and sometimes discard them in biohazard bins.

Cryogenic storage tanks holding frozen embryos.
A still of a moving live embryo image taken with a time-lapse embryo incubator.

Current Project

In 2022 and 2023, I conducted participant observation with embryologists, physicians, and patients in IVF clinics in the northeast United States.

I found that as embryos are cultured (literally grown in laboratories), they are also multiply enculturated—imbued with complex social meanings that stem from diverging understandings of embryonic life.

In my dissertation, I describe how embryos shift from reproductive cells, into potential life, unborn children, private property, medical waste, and more. Amid these cultural complexities, the scientists who grow and manage human embryos must increasingly navigate what it means to create ‘life’ in the laboratory today.

Patients' embryos appear on the time-lapse incubator screen for inspection. An embryologist studies the images, pointing at the screen with their pen.

Learn more

About Me

About Me
Research Program

Research Program
Teaching

Teaching
Get in touch

Get in touch