Maya Unnithan

Maya Unnithan is a Professor of Social and Medical Anthropology at the University of Sussex, affiliated with the School of Global Studies and Department of Anthropology. She has been faculty since 1991 and currently serves as Head of Department and Director of the Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies & Health (CORTH).

Her research focuses on reproductive health, gender politics, biopolitics, and bodily autonomy across India and the UK. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Rajasthan and explored topics like infertility, surrogacy, abortion, and prenatal sex selection. Her work bridges global health norms with local contexts, examining how reproductive rights are interpreted and contested.

• 2025: "The Undue Importance of Marriage in India's Current Surrogacy Legislation" (Amicus Curiae)
• 2024: "Anthropology and Subaltern Historiography" (Discover Society)
• 2023: "Anthropology of Abortion" (Wiley)
• 2023: "Only parents can understand thalassaemia needs" (Anthropology & Medicine)
• 2022: "Substantial Relations: Making Global Reproductive Medicine in Postcolonial India" (Springer)
• 2022: "Conflicted reproductive governance" (Springer)
• 2021: "Arbitrating abortion in England" (Medical Anthropology)
• 2020: "Gender politics in Rajasthan" (Discourses of Development)
• 2019: "Fertility, Health and Reproductive Politics" (Routledge monograph)
• 2018: "Re-situating abortion in neoliberal times" (Global Public Health)
• 2018: "Re-visioning evidence on UK sex selection" (Global Public Health)
• 2015: "Bodily rights and collective claims" (Health & Human Rights)
• 2014: "On reproductive justice in India" (Culture, Health & Sexuality)
• 2014: "Challenges translating human rights" (Development and Change)
• 2013: Review of Maraesa's reproductive anthropology (Ethos)

Unnithan has received significant funding including:

• 2025-2027: LEVERHULME TRUST - "Reproductive freedom and ethics"
• 2023: BRITISH ACADEMY - "Articulations of Communal Harmony in Kerala"
• 2022-2024: Norwegian Research Council - "Reporting in context" maternal health initiative
• 2017-2021: ESRC - "Son preference and sex selection in the UK"
• 2016-2020: ESRC - "Inherited blood disorders and genomics in India"
• 2009-2012: ESRC - "Realising Global Rights to Health"
• 2018: WHO Safe Abortion Guidance participation
• 2013: WHO maternal health evidence monograph contribution
• 2015-2018: UK Reproductive Health Leadership Forum advisor
• 2015-2018: APPG on Reproductive Health evidence submissions

She co-founded CORTH in 2014 to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue on reproductive politics and health technologies. The center has fostered international collaborations with researchers from Norway, Tanzania, Ethiopia, India, Bangladesh, and Ghana, including knowledge exchange programs and a Memorandum of Understanding. Unnithan's work explores how gender values migrate across borders and shift over generations, impacting reproductive healthcare access and policy implementation.