top of page

Publications

Latest Publications
Michelle Pentecost, Jaya Keaney, Tessa Moll and Michael Penkler (Eds). 2024. The Handbook of DOHaD and Society: The Past, Present, and Future of Biosocial Collaboration. Cambridge University Press. (open access)

Research in the field of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease has had a fundamental impact on our understanding of how environmental experiences and contexts influence the development of health and disease over the entire lifecourse. Covering a wide range of geographic regions, this volume includes an overview of the field, key concepts, and cutting-edge examples of interdisciplinary collaboration. The first reference text covering the interdisciplinary work of DOHaD, a broad list of contents maps the history of DOHaD, showcases examples of biosocial collaboration in action, offers a conceptual toolkit for interdisciplinary research, and maps future directions for the field.

Tessa Moll. 2024. "Egg providers in eGoli: Operability and aspiration in South African fertility markets". American Ethnologist. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13350 (open access)

Global oocyte markets have tapped into a precariously middle-class population of young Black women in Johannesburg, where the neoliberal state has largely retreated from fostering social mobility. What role does egg donation play in the social world of young South African women? I approach this question by extending Cohen's concept of “operability,” which can illuminate how egg donation becomes a means for young women to enact modernity, or relationality beyond the postapartheid state and the horizons of their social worlds, structured as they are by the entanglements of race, class, and gender.

Tessa Moll, Maurizio Meloni, & Ayuba Issaka. 2024. "Foetal programming meets human capital: biological plasticity, development, and the limits to the economization of life." BioSocieties 19, 424–451. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-023-00309-8 (open access)

The disciplinary integration of biology and economy is taking new forms in the postgenomic era, transforming long-standing exchanges between human biology and economics. In this article, We map the global expansion of research in development and health economics that has embraced, stabilized, and expanded the emerging field of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD). Via an analysis of shifting models of health in human capital, we argue that as economists draw on DOHaD theories, their increasing focus on marginalized groups in postcolonial settings produces a darker model of health deficit. Based on notions of accumulated shocks, emerging health models in economics reflect the double nature of biological and developmental plasticity caught between agency and passivity, change, and near-permanency.

Tessa Moll. 2022. "Six days in plastic: Potentiality, normalization and in vitro embryos in the postgenomic era. Science, Technology & Human Values 47(6), 1253-1276. https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439221090685 (open access)

Part of the normalization of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) is the premise that the children born from in vitro fertilization (IVF) are no different from their counterparts conceived spontaneously. However, interest in peri-conception health and new epigenetic understandings of biological plasticity has led to some questioning the presumed irrelevance of conception in vitro, and when doing so, describing IVF children as “apparently healthy.” Taking “apparently” and “healthy” seriously, this article explores how modes of attention—ways of naming and framing embryo potentiality—shape understandings of health and normality. Ethnographic findings from South Africa’s fertility clinics and emerging literature on epigenetic variation in IVF conception demonstrate how, under a genetic mode of attention, IVF clinics views “abnormality” as fated, unviable, and discardable. Exploring the possibility of answering the postgenomic questions to IVF reveals structural challenges to knowing long-term health implications. Incipient attempts within the fertility clinic at managing these questions shows various strategic techniques, such as leveraging epigenetics to marketable ends and shifts to individual responsibility.

Complete list of publications

Academic books

  1. Moll, Tessa. Forthcoming. Curating Conception: Race and Reproduction in South Africa (Rutgers University Press, 2026).

  2. Pentecost, Michelle, Jaya Keaney, and Michael Penkler (Eds.). 2024. The Handbook of DOHaD and Society: The Past, Present, and Future of Biosocial Collaboration. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (OPEN ACCESS)

 

Articles in refereed journals

  1. – Under Review. Manderson, Lenore, , Trudie Gerrits and Andrea Whittaker. “Regional cross-border fertility patients in South Africa.” Therapeutic Advances in Reproductive Medicine.

  2. – Under Review. Moll, Tessa. “Toward a politics of (in)fertility: Reproductive debility in sub-Saharan Africa.” American Anthropologist.

  3. – Forthcoming. Hegarty, Ben, Maurizio Meloni, Ayuba Issaka, Luca Chiapperino, Tessa Moll and Sam Cadman. “What language does STS speak? A sociology of bibliometrics for understanding the interplay between geography, language, and power.” Social Studies of Science.

  4. Moll, Tessa. 2024. “Egg providers in eGoli: Operability and aspiration in South African fertility markets.” American Ethnologist, 51(4): 568-579. (HTML)

  5. Moll, Tessa, Maurizio Meloni and Ayuba Issaka. 2024. “Foetal programming meets human capital: Development, biological plasticity, and the limits to the ‘economization of life’.” BioSocieties, 19(3): 424-451. (HTML)

  6. Moll, Tessa. 2022. "Six days in plastic: IVF, potential, and risk in the postgenomic age." Science, Technology & Human Values, 47(6): 1253-1276. (HTML)

  7. Meloni, Maurizio, Ayuba Issaka and Christopher Kuzawa. 2022. “A biosocial return to race? A cautionary view for the post-genomic era.” American Journal of Human Biology, 34(7): e23742. (HTML)

  8. Moll, Tessa, Trudie Gerrits, Karin Hammersberg, Lenore Manderson and Andrea Whittaker. 2022. “Reproductive travel to, from and within sub-Sahara Africa: a scoping review.” Reproductive BioMedicine & Society Online, 14: 271-288. (HTML)

  9. Moll, Tessa. 2021. “Medical mistrust and enduring racism in South Africa.” Symposium: Institutional Racism, Whiteness, and Bioethics. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 18: 117–120. (HTML)

  10. Ross, Fiona and Tessa Moll. 2020. “Assisted Reproduction: politics, ethics, and anthropological futures.”    Medical Anthropology, 39(6): 553-562. (HTML)

  11. Moll, Tessa. 2019. “Making a Match: Curating Race in South African Gamete Donation.” Medical Anthropology, 38(7): 588-602. (HTML)

  12. Pande, Amrita and Tessa Moll. 2018. “Gendered Bio-Responsibilization: Travelling Egg Provision in South Africa.” Reproductive BioMedicine & Society Online, 6: 23-33. (HTML)

  13. Moll, Tessa. 2015. “Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells, and the Future of Kinship by Sarah Franklin.” Anthropology Southern Africa, 38(1-2):149-151. (HTML)

​

Book chapters

  1. – Forthcoming. Moll, Tessa. “Egg markets in flux: Globalization, inequalities, and technology in the changing fertility markets in South Africa.” In Conceiving Change: Rethinking Reproduction in Africa. Mkhwanazi, N and D Bhana (eds.). London: Zed Books.

  2. – Forthcoming. Moll, Tessa. “Reproducing worlds: Ethnographic approaches in environmental health research.” In Handbook of Health and Environmental Humanities. Abrams, A., V. Bates, and R Gomex (eds.). London: Routledge.

  3. Penkler, Michael, Jaya Keaney, and Michelle Pentecost. 2024. “DOHaD Pasts, Presents, and Futures: An Introduction.” In The Handbook of DOHaD and Society, Pentecost, M, J Keaney, T Moll and M Penkler (eds.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 1-16. (HTML)

  4. Meloni, Maurizio, Christopher Kuzawa, Ayuba Issaka and . 2024. “A biosocial return to race? Racial differences in DOHaD and environmental epigenetics”. In The Handbook of DOHaD and Society. Pentecost, M, J Keaney, T Moll and M Penkler (eds.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 57-68. (HTML)

  5. Moll, Tessa, Trudie Gerrits, Karin Hammarberg, Lenore Manderson et Andrea Whittaker. 2024. “Voyages reproductifs en provenance et au sein de l’Afrique subsaharienne : vue d’ensemble". In Voyager pour procréer au Maghreb. Expériences au sein d'une nouvelle industrie médicale. Rouland, B and I Maffi (eds.). Paris: Karthala-IRMC. Pp. 35-74.

  6. Ross, Fiona, Michelle Pentecost and . 2023. “Epigenetics and the anthropology of reproduction.” In A Companion to the Anthropology of Reproductive Medicine and Technology. van Hollen, CC and N Appleton (eds.) Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Pp 458-472.

  7. Moll, Tessa. 2022. “Subjects of scarcity: making white egg providers in South Africa.” In Birth Controlled: Selective Reproduction and Neoliberal Eugenics in South Africa and India, A Pande (ed.) Manchester: Manchester University Press. Pp 314-340.

  8. Moll, Tessa. 2021. “Reproduction, Sacrificial Life, and the Logics of Attrition in the Afterlife of Apartheid.” In Birthing Techno-Sapiens: Human-Technology Co-Evolution and the Future of Reproduction, R Davis-Floyd (ed.). New York: Routledge. Pp 90-102.

 

Other academic output

  1. Msimang, Phila and Tessa Moll. 2025. “An abridge timeline of shifting racial classification in South Africa, 1652-present.” figshare. Figure. (HTML)

  2. Keaney, Jaya and Tessa Moll. 2020. Fertility care in the era of COVID. Policy Brief. Alfred Deakin Institute. (PDF)

  3. Moll, Tessa. 2020. “Gloves, embryos, and DDT: Thinking with surfaces on toxicity in South Africa.” Somatosphere. (HTML)

  4. Moll, Tessa. 2018. “Blue binders of white donors: Sorting race out in South African IVF.” Somatosphere. (HTML)

©2020 by Tessa Moll. Proudly created with Wix.com

bottom of page