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Introduction (2020)
Book Chapter
Kirtsoglou, E., & Simpson, B. (2021). Introduction. In E. Kirtsoglou, & B. Simpson (Eds.), The time of anthropology: studies of contemporary chronopolitics (1-30). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003087199

I do not define time, space, place and motion as being well known to all. But it must be observed that the vulgar conceive those quantities only from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of... Read More about Introduction.

Global Bioethics: A Story of Dreams and Doubts from Bengal, India (2018)
Journal Article
Simpson, B. (2018). Global Bioethics: A Story of Dreams and Doubts from Bengal, India. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 61(2), 215-229. https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2018.0038

This article is concerned with the practice of bioethics outside of the Euro-American and Anglophone settings in which it was first formulated. In theoretical terms, the article considers the frictions that arise when global-scale projects such as bi... Read More about Global Bioethics: A Story of Dreams and Doubts from Bengal, India.

Data management in anthropology: the next phase in ethics governance? (2018)
Journal Article
Pels, P., Boog, I., Henrike Florusbosch, J., Kripe, Z., Minter, T., Postma, M., …Richards-Rissetto, H. (2018). Data management in anthropology: the next phase in ethics governance?. Social Anthropology, 26(3), 391-413. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12526

Recent demands for accountability in ‘data management’ by funding agencies, universities, international journals and other academic institutions have worried many anthropologists and ethnographers. While their demands for transparency and integrity i... Read More about Data management in anthropology: the next phase in ethics governance?.

Local Virtue and Global Vision: The Practice of Eye donation in contemporary Sri Lanka (2017)
Journal Article
Simpson, R. (2017). Local Virtue and Global Vision: The Practice of Eye donation in contemporary Sri Lanka. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 4(4), 150-170. https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.4.4.316

A death radically rearranges kinship, debt, obligation, and responsibility, and it also triggers prescribed routines for mourning and material disposal of the corpse. It is into this complex and fraught unfolding of events that the rhetorics of corpo... Read More about Local Virtue and Global Vision: The Practice of Eye donation in contemporary Sri Lanka.

A “we” problem for bioethics and the social sciences: A response to Barbara Prainsack (2017)
Journal Article
Simpson, B. (2018). A “we” problem for bioethics and the social sciences: A response to Barbara Prainsack. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 43(1), 45-55. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243917735899

In her article “The We in the Me: Solidarity in the Era of Personalized Medicine,” Barbara Prainsack develops an earlier interest in the relationship between solidarity and autonomy and the way that these notions operate once passed through the lens... Read More about A “we” problem for bioethics and the social sciences: A response to Barbara Prainsack.

The formalization of social-science research ethics: How did we get there? (2017)
Journal Article
Sleeboom-Faulkner, M., Simpson, R., Burgos-Martinez, E., & McMurray, J. (2017). The formalization of social-science research ethics: How did we get there?. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7(1), 71-79. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau7.1.010

In the United States, the “common law,” that regulates ethics review is being overhauled. We ask how UK University Research Ethics Committees (U-RECs), following the American model, have been able to shape social-science research without much commoti... Read More about The formalization of social-science research ethics: How did we get there?.

IVF in Sri Lanka: A concise history of regulatory impasse (2016)
Journal Article
Simpson, R. (2016). IVF in Sri Lanka: A concise history of regulatory impasse. Reproductive Biomedicine and Society Online, 2, 8-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rbms.2016.02.003

This article outlines the development of IVF in Sri Lanka from the first successful births in the late 1990s and over the subsequent 15 years. It is based on anthropological fieldwork carried out at various points during this period. The piece focuse... Read More about IVF in Sri Lanka: A concise history of regulatory impasse.

Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Third Phase: Global Encounters and Emerging Moral Worlds (2015)
Book
Hampshire, K., & Simpson, R. (Eds.). (2015). Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Third Phase: Global Encounters and Emerging Moral Worlds. Berghahn Books

Following the birth of the first “test-tube baby” in 1978, Assisted Reproductive Technologies became available to a small number of people in high-income countries able to afford the cost of private treatment, a period seen as the “First Phase” of AR... Read More about Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Third Phase: Global Encounters and Emerging Moral Worlds.

Fifteenth Century Problems for the Twenty-First Century Gift: Human Tissue Transactions in Ethnically Diverse Societies (2014)
Journal Article
Simpson, B. (2014). Fifteenth Century Problems for the Twenty-First Century Gift: Human Tissue Transactions in Ethnically Diverse Societies. Anthropological Forum, 24(4), 338-350. https://doi.org/10.1080/00664677.2014.947356

The language of the ‘gift’ continues to be drawn upon in attempts to encourage altruistic organ and tissue donation. My aim here is to consider the anxieties that come into focus when this rhetoric is deployed in the context of ethnic minorities and,... Read More about Fifteenth Century Problems for the Twenty-First Century Gift: Human Tissue Transactions in Ethnically Diverse Societies.

Pharmaceuticalisation and ethical review in South Asia: Issues of scope and authority for practitioners and policy makers (2014)
Journal Article
Simpson, B., Khatri, R., Ravindran, D., & Udalagama, T. (2015). Pharmaceuticalisation and ethical review in South Asia: Issues of scope and authority for practitioners and policy makers. Social Science & Medicine, 131, 247-254. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.03.016

Ethical review by expert committee continues to be the first line of defence when it comes to protecting human subjects recruited into clinical trials. Drawing on a large scale study of biomedical experimentation across South Asia, and specifically o... Read More about Pharmaceuticalisation and ethical review in South Asia: Issues of scope and authority for practitioners and policy makers.