Cecily is a scholarship recipient of the ARC Centre for Automated Decision-Making and Society.

Each year the Centre offers a select number of PhD scholarships across our nodes to engage and prepare the next generation of researchers to make world-leading contributions in an increasingly engaged and transdisciplinary research environment.

Thesis Title
The role and future of emerging technologies in contraceptive advocacy, provision, and use.

Research Description
Facing the decline in contraceptive innovation and investment from pharmaceutical companies, coupled with continued dissatisfaction and discontinuation by users of contraceptives already available, this thesis explores the current role and speculative future of emerging technologies as an alternative avenue in contraceptive advocacy, provision, and use. From blogs, tracking apps and telehealth, to precision medicine, hormonal profiling and algorithms that determine when a user is fertile, Femtech and digital health services are rapidly expanding in the contraceptive arena; but do they address the needs of the users while simultaneously ensuring that national contraceptive health strategies are achieved? Through the lens of critical digital health studies and feminist HCI, this research uses creative design and arts-based methods to work alongside users to identify the opportunities and risks of these technologies in order to establish a set of principles and recommendations for the future of contraceptive innovation.

Supervisor
Prof Deborah Lupton, University of New South Wales