Daisy Deomampo

B.S., University of Wisconsin-Madison;
M.A., The New School;
Ph.D., City University of New York

Medical anthropology, science and technology studies, critical race and gender studies, reproduction, globalization and global health, bioethics, South Asia, Asian American Studies.

I am a cultural and medical anthropologist whose research interests encompass science and technology studies, critical race studies, reproductive health and politics, and bioethics and social justice. My book, Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India (NYU Press, 2016), is the first to foreground issues of race and racialization in the context of transnational surrogacy in India. In the book, I argue that ideologies of race lie at the heart of transnational family-making, illuminating the intersections of race, power, kinship, and inequality in the context of transnational gestational surrogacy. The book is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in India with Indian surrogate mothers, Western intended parents, and egg donors from around the world, as well as doctors and other actors. 

My research and writing have been supported by multiple sources including the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. My current research explores the social meanings of race, identity, and DNA in the context of gamete (egg and sperm) donation among Asian Americans in the United States.

2019. Racialized Commodities: Race and Value in Human Egg Donation. Medical Anthropology 38(7): 620-633.

2019. Centering Race and Racism in Reproduction [co-authored with Natali Valdez]. Medical Anthropology 38(7): 551-559.

2016. Race, Nation, and the Production of Intimacy: Transnational Egg Donation in India. positions: asia critique 24(1): 303-332.

2015. Defining Parents, Making Citizens: Nationality and Citizenship in Transnational Surrogacy. Medical Anthropology 34(3): 210-225.

2015. Extending Theory, Rupturing Boundaries: Reproduction, Health, and Medicine Beyond North-South Boundaries [co-authored with Nayantara Sheoran and Cecilia Van Hollen]. Medical Anthropology 34(3): 185-191.

2013. Transnational Surrogacy in India: Interrogating Power and Women’s Agency. Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 34(3): 167-188.

2013. Gendered Geographies of Reproductive Tourism. Gender & Society 27(4): 514-537.

2008. Gender, Sexuality and AIDS in Brazil: Transformative Approaches to HIV prevention. Michigan Discussions in Anthropology 17(1): 108-131.

2016. Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India. New York: New York University Press.

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology; Vocation of the Health Care Provider; Anthropology of Health and Healing; Health, Healing, and Social Justice; Reproductive Technologies: Global Perspectives; Race, Sex, and Science.