Project description
Genetic counselling and family formations in comparative religious contexts
Religious minorities have unique attitudes towards genetic counselling and reproductive practices, but research often focuses on specific national contexts, neglecting broader comparisons. The ERC-funded RELI-GENE project will investigate minority perspectives on genetic counselling and reproductive options for inherited genetic disorders, focusing on communities that value consanguineous and endogamous marriages. The project investigates how state-led genetic healthcare policies intersect with religious and cultural practices in close-knit religious minority communities, including Jewish, Christian and Muslim groups, particularly in relation to consanguineous and endogamous unions. Through a comparative analysis across Europe and the Middle East, RELI-GENE offers a new approach to understanding how state regulations, communal norms and individual agency shape contemporary family-making.
Objective
RELI-GENE is an interdisciplinary project which examines minorities’ attitudes towards genetic counselling and reproductive options in the case of inherited genetic recessive disorders and analyses how healthcare policies govern communities’ family formations. It focuses on close-knit religious minorities that emphasise consanguineous and endogamous marriages to strengthen communal bonds to provide a sense of solidarity and of safeguarding lineage and purity. Current scholarship focuses predominantly on single national contexts, specific healthcare policies and individual religious communities, neglecting comparable perspectives. RELI-GENE specifically analyses how transnational spaces serve as strategies to navigate and bypass national healthcare policies and legal restrictions related to marriage and reproductive practices. The project adds a new conceptual framework to understanding (a) the broader implications of directive, nondirective and mandatory genetic counselling within diverse national healthcare systems; (b) communities’ own use of biopolitics to construct discourses around lineage and purity; (c) how individuals respond to both state policies and to the religio-cultural norms and expectations within their communities.
RELI-GENE offers a perspectival shift on the governmentality and biopolitics of family formation by
1. examining the different forms of power in state-led biopolitics in Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Sweden and Germany and their respective healthcare systems,
2. exploring communities and their transnational links which for religious, cultural and political reasons manifest a biopolitics of purity and examining how these communities construct lineage-oriented narratives to counter their minority status or sense of persecution and marginalisation,
3. analysing how individuals respond to state policies but also to the religio-cultural traditions of their communities, and how they engage in various forms of self-governing.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
WC1H OXG London
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.