Our Senior Societies resumed this week with three fascinating sessions organised by our Philosophy and FemSoc, Environmental Awareness Society and Engineering Society.
Philosophy Soc and Fem Soc welcomed Dr Baron, who is a philosopher working in the field of bioethics. Her current research is on the philosophy of parenthood, sexual and reproductive ethics. She has published work on parental rights of adolescent mothers and is currently advising lawmakers on recent proposals for a bill to change the law on surrogacy. In her talk, Dr Baron highlighted the interesting way in which laws about surrogacy have been framed on the model of adoption but the process of surrogacy is increasingly seen as a form of fertility treatment. These changing assumptions have led to conflicting views about parental rights, the rights of the child and the extent to which the process should be commercialised. Questions from the girls included, “Is it ever right to pay surrogate mothers?” and “How should we decide who gets parental rights?”
Environmental Awareness Society welcomed Dr Laure Sioné, who spoke about improving global health through water and sanitation. Dr Sioné is an ambassador for women in engineering, currently working as a research associate at Imperial College London. She has a Masters of Engineering in sustainable civil and environmental engineering from UCL and a doctorate in the same field. She works with partner universities, trusts and charities worldwide to improve water and sanitation services in developing countries, with the greater goal of improving public health. She gave an overview of what public health engineering is and its importance as well as explaining her research on means to collect data on water supplies in countries with low data and low resources and developing new sanitation technologies with charities.
Finally, our Engineering Society discussed the ‘Insane Engineering of Concorde’ and watched a fascinating documentary about Aerospace Engineering.
