Share
UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre Podcast
What Does Eugenics Mean To Us? Episode 2: Curating Heads
This episode documents and commemorates a collaborative research project at UCL, which brought together geneticists, historians, archaeologists and museum curators to consider how science mediates the dilemma of death. It was called Curating Heads and its scientific aims were to use the latest techniques in Ancient DNA analysis to sequence the genomes of two historic figures at UCL: the philosopher Jeremy Bentham and the archaeologist, William Matthew Flinders Petrie. The exhibition that grew out of this research showcased this work and also critically examined the legacies of eugenics in genetics and archaeology. Join Subhadra and her guests as they reminisce about the project and reflect on the benefits of collaborative and interdisciplinary work.
Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-what-does-eugenics-mean-us-episode-2
This conversation was recorded on 30th March 2021
Host: Subhadra Das, Critical Eugenics Researcher, UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre
Guests: Alice Stevenson was Curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology during the run of this project. She is now Associate Professor in Museum Studies at UCL's Institute of Archaeology, and also the co-founder of a brilliant decolonial museum project called 100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object.
A historian and classicist by training, Debbie Challis was Audience Development at the Petrie Museum where her research, public programmes and exhibitions are seminal milestones in the history of critical eugenics at UCL. She is the author of The Archaeology of Race, and she is now Education and Outreach Officer at the London School of Economics Library.
Mark Thomas is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics in the Research Department of UCL Genetics, Evolution and Environment. He is also UCL's ancient DNA researcher to the stars, having worked on aDNA projects on Richard III, and Charles Byrne (who was known as the Irish giant).
Tim Causer is Research Fellow at The Bentham Project based at UCL Laws, and as such one of UCL's go-to Bentham experts. Together with Professor Philip Schofield, Tim is an editor of Panopticon vs. New South Wales and Other Writings on Australia, a forthcoming collection of the works of Jeremy Bentham.
Producer: Cerys Bradley
Music: Blue Dot Sessions
The rest of the team behind Curating Heads, and its accompanying exhibition What Does It Mean to Be Human? were: Dr Elizabeth Dobson, Dr Lucy van Dorp, Dr Tom Booth and Dr Selina Hurley. Nick Booth was the Curator of the Auto-icon of Jeremy Bentham at the time of the project.
www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/what-does-eugenics-mean-us
More episodes
View all episodes
SPRC In Conversation with Gala Rexer
42:44|In this episode of the SPRC podcast, Gala Rexer speaks about her book Demographic Anxieties: Bodies, Borders, and Reproductive Injustice in Palestine/Israel (University of California Press, 2026). The conversation explores how reproductive justice in Palestine/Israel is shaped by borders, incarceration, and the global histories of eugenics. Drawing on ethnographic research with Palestinian patients navigating fertility treatment in Israeli medical institutions and Israeli fertility doctors, Rexer also discusses the experiences of Palestinian health-workers in Israeli fertility clinics, and the informal networks through which Palestinians sustain reproductive futures. It also considers the ethical challenges of researching Palestine/Israel, the responsibilities of the ethnographer, and methods of “fugitive anthropology”: a feminist approach to research that remains accountable to the embodied realities of colonialism, conflict and racialised violence. The episode closes by reflecting on feminist debt, and the responsibilities of scholars working from positions of relative safety.Gala Rexer is a feminist sociologist whose research examines gender, sexuality, race, health inequalities, and the body. She is known for her work on reproductive and environmental injustice in Palestine/Israel, Germany, and the UK. She is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Warwick, where she also co-directs the Social Theory Centre, and Honorary Research Fellow at UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre. Her current research explores the effects of pollution and toxic infrastructures on reproduction, health, and family life in London. She is the co-editor of a special issue ofThe Sociological Review on "Sociology in the Times of Genocide". This conversation is about her new book, Demographic Anxieties: Bodies, Borders, and Reproductive Injustice in Palestine/Israel, published by the University of California Press in 2026.Lara Choksey is Lecturer in Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures at UCL English.This podcast was recorded in September 2026.
SPRC In Conversation with Dr Chenchen Zhang
42:58|Luke de Noronha is joined by Chenchen Zhang, Associate Professor in International Relations at Durham University. Chenchen’s book Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China, was published by Oxford University Press in June 2026. The book examines how ideas of ‘the West’ and articulations of China-West difference are produced and mobilized in contemporary China, with a focus on reactionary political discourse in Chinese cyberspace. Chenchen situates the Chinese case study within a wider critique of the global far right and postcolonial nationalisms. This podcast was recorded in June 2026.
SPRC In conversation with Rahul Rao: Statues, idols and why we love the idea of an animate object
52:56|A conversation about Rahul Rao’s book, ‘The Psychic Lives of Statues’. The conversation considers the agitation caused by attempts to remove celebratory statues of figures involved in the violence of the Atlantic Slave trade or of colonialism. Are statues made into ‘idols’ by people who want to defend these histories? How should we understand the sudden ‘coming alive’ of these previously forgotten and unnoticed representations of the human form? What can we learn from the distinctive erection of statues by corporate or state projects in our time and should we view these recent attempts to mark and control space through statues as a continuation of the spatial and representation tactics of European colonialism?The conversation was recorded in July 2025.Speakers: Gargi Bhattacharyya and Rahul Rao.
SPRC In conversation with Gavan Titley
39:17|Luke de Noronha is joined by Gavan Titley, Professor in the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University. Gavan has written several books on race, racism and multiculturalism, with a particular focus on the generative role of media and communication, including Is Free Speech Racist? with Polity Press in 2020. They discuss the question of free speech, which has become so central to questions of native entitlement and authoritarian populism in the present. The conversation was recorded in November 2025. Speakers: Luke de Noronha and Gavan Titley
SPRC In Conversation with Sita Balani
32:01|Luke de Noronha welcomes Sita Balani, Senior Lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London and the author, most recently, of Deadly and Slick: the Sexual Life of Race in Britain (Verso Press, 2023). They discuss Sita’s recent writings on culture wars, melodrama as a mode of political communication, and the difference between the ordinary and normal. This conversation was recorded in November 2025Speakers: Luke de Noronha and Sita BalaniProducer: Trisha HartEditor: James Fox
3. SPRC In Conversation with Keir Milburn and Kai Heron: Part 3
20:23||Ep. 3Radical Abundance – understanding the reconfiguration of the global economy and how we might survive itKeir Milburn and Kai Heron in conversation with Gargi Bhattacharyya. This conversation was recorded in the summer of 2025 and discusses the changing role and approach of the United States and the extreme hardships arising from climate catastrophe as triggers to re-imagine the global economy.The conversation was recorded before the publication of Kai and Keir’s excellent and celebrated book, ‘Radical Abundance’, but the themes of the conversation echo the preoccupations of the book.There was a lot to discuss here – as a result we have split the conversation into three sections for ease of listening.
2. SPRC In Conversation with Keir Milburn and Kai Heron: Part 2
20:41||Ep. 2Radical Abundance – understanding the reconfiguration of the global economy and how we might survive itKeir Milburn and Kai Heron in conversation with Gargi Bhattacharyya. This conversation was recorded in the summer of 2025 and discusses the changing role and approach of the United States and the extreme hardships arising from climate catastrophe as triggers to re-imagine the global economy.The conversation was recorded before the publication of Kai and Keir’s excellent and celebrated book, ‘Radical Abundance’, but the themes of the conversation echo the preoccupations of the book.There was a lot to discuss here – as a result we have split the conversation into three sections for ease of listening.
1. SPRC In Conversation with Keir Milburn and Kai Heron: Part 1
22:47||Ep. 1Radical Abundance – understanding the reconfiguration of the global economy and how we might survive itKeir Milburn and Kai Heron in conversation with Gargi Bhattacharyya. This conversation was recorded in the summer of 2025 and discusses the changing role and approach of the United States and the extreme hardships arising from climate catastrophe as triggers to re-imagine the global economy.The conversation was recorded before the publication of Kai and Keir’s excellent and celebrated book, ‘Radical Abundance’, but the themes of the conversation echo the preoccupations of the book.There was a lot to discuss here – as a result we have split the conversation into three sections for ease of listening.
SPRC In Conversation with Edna Bonhomme
34:07|Gala Rexer talks to Edna Bonhomme, culture writer, historian of science, journalist, and author of “A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19” (2025). The conversation covers theoretical and methodological questions about the relationship between confinement and disease, Edna’s anti/inter-disciplinary approach to writing, health and illness in literature, and how the intersectional fight for prison abolition relates to struggles for health equality. This conversation was recorded in June 2025Speakers: Dr Gala Rexer, Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Warwick and Honorary Research Fellow at the SPRC // Dr Edna Bonhomme Producer: Gala Rexer and Trisha HartEditors: James Fox