Biography
Dr Robert Pralat is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Sociology and a member of the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (ReproSoc). He studies how people respond to cultural changes and advances in medicine that enable them to become parents, with a particular focus on sexual minorities and men living with HIV. In his research, Robert is especially interested in how people imagine their future and how they approach the prospect of having children or remaining childfree. Robert’s recent research also examines moral judgements about public funding allocation in healthcare.
Robert is Medical Sociology Subject Manager on the multi-disciplinary MPhil in Health, Medicine and Society. He is also actively involved in teaching on the MPhil in Sociology and on the Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS) Tripos, where he lectures on the sociology of gender and the sociology of health and illness.
Robert has a BSc in Psychology and an MA in Gender Studies from the University of Leeds, and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge. Before moving to Cambridge in 2011, he worked for OPM, a London-based research organisation, and in the Centre for Sexual Health and HIV Research at University College London.
You can follow Robert on Academia and Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Publications
Pralat R, Burns F, Anderson J and Barber TJ (in press) Can HIV-positive gay men become parents? How men living with HIV and HIV clinicians talk about the possibility of having children. Sociology of Health & Illness DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.13218. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13218
Pralat R (2021) Sexual identities and reproductive orientations: Coming out as wanting (or not wanting) to have children. Sexualities 24(1–2): 276–294. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460720926967
Pralat R (2020) Parenthood as intended: Reproductive responsibility, moral judgements and having children ‘by accident’. The Sociological Review 68(1): 161–176. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026119868643
Pralat R (2018) More natural does not equal more normal: Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people’s views about different pathways to parenthood. Journal of Family Issues 39(18): 4179–4203. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513x18810951
Pralat R (2016) Between future families and families of origin: Talking about gay parenthood across generations. In: Pooley S and Qureshi K (eds) Parenthood Between Generations: Transforming Reproductive Cultures. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 43–64. https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/PooleyParenthood
Pralat R (2015) Repro-sexual intersections: Sperm donation, HIV prevention and the public interest in semen. Reproductive Biomedicine Online 30(3): 211–219. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rbmo.2014.11.007
For a full list of publications, see Google Scholar or Scopus.
