Annual Lecture in the History of Women, Gender and Sexuality Lecture Title: 'Children by choice and not by blind chance'. Multi-scalar histories of family planning in and from early postcolonial South Asia.

The Annual Lecture in the History of Women, Gender and Sexuality of the School of History will be delivered this year by Dr Rosalind Parr of Glasgow Caledonian University.

Dr Parr will discuss how In the decades following Independence, family planning became integral to the development aspirations of South Asian states. Led predominantly by women working through state and non-state channels, the drive for fertility control was fraught with tensions related to nationalist interests, foreign influence and notions of individual choice.
Set against a backdrop of decolonisation and Cold War rivalries, this Annual Lecture will examine the way family planning was structured and experienced at different scales to explore themes of coercion, voluntariness, emancipation and the constraints of development.