Intimate Technologies of Reproductive Health

Over the past decade, digital technologies designed to monitor, predict, and manage reproductive health have proliferated at an unprecedented pace. It has become commonplace to use apps to track menstrual cycles, fertility status, pregnancy progress, or menopausal symptoms. In other words, apps and accompanying gadgets such as wristbands, thermometers, or insertables are part of our most intimate everyday life, mentally and physically. With their help, we track, we predict, we expect; we tell them about pain, lust or even loss. In return, platforms promise freedom from hormonal ‘chaos’ or pharmaceutical intervention, and the ability to take health and fertility into our own hands. Through proprietary algorithms and increasingly AI-driven features, they translate embodied rhythms into data streams, offering the seductive sense that what has historically been framed as unpredictable or uncontrollable can now be known and managed.

Yet reproductive health technologies are never neutral tools. They operate within dense networks of gender norms, racialized histories of medical control, data concerns, and more. Reproductive health apps thus sit at a critical intersection of technological innovation, societal expectation, and political struggle. They constitute what might colloquially be termed a “can of worms”, demanding sustained, systematic, and intersectional feminist inquiry. Although important scholarship exists, research remains fragmented. What is needed is a dedicated volume that brings these strands together to interrogate both the promises and the power structures of digital reproductive health. We ask:

• How do these technologies make or break societal expectations of gender, sexuality, and reproduction?

• In what ways do they transform embodied experience, self-knowledge, and affective relations to the body?

• How do users make sense of the paradoxical situation of having body data available on their screens, while it is at the same time harvested by big tech companies and used in oblique ways

• How do race, class, disability, sexuality, age, and geopolitical location intersect with these technologies?

• What would reproductive health apps look like in a sustainable, feminist, decolonial future—one that acknowledges the uncontrollable and centers embodied knowledge, collective care, and reproductive justice?

• How might feminist and critical design practices intervene in current infrastructures?

We invite chapter proposals for an edited volume that critically examines reproductive health apps and related digital technologies from intersectional feminist perspectives including but not limited to HCI and interaction design. The collection seeks to foreground power, inequality, and resistance while exploring possibilities for more just and accountable technological futures. We welcome contributions that engage with, but are not limited to, the following themes: 

Social and Cultural Dimensions

• Empowerment and Agency: How do reproductive health apps enable or constrain users in taking reproductive health into their own hands?

• Diversity, Gender, and Queer Perspectives: How do they address—or fail to address— diverse identities, non-binary experiences, and queer communities?

• Normativity and Inclusion: How do reproductive health apps reinforce or challenge traditional norms around gender, sexuality, and reproductive health?

• Intersectional Analyses: How do race, class, disability, and other axes of identity shape experiences with such digital technologies? 

Technical and Design Perspectives

• User and Design Studies: How are reproductive health apps designed, and how do users interact with them? What are the implications for usability, accessibility, and user experience?

• Algorithmic Intimacy and Automation: How do algorithms and automation shape users’ experiences of intimacy, bodily autonomy, and reproductive decision-making?

• Datafication and Patienthood: How do reproductive health apps contribute to the datafication of reproductive health, and how does this reshape concepts of patienthood and self-tracking?

• Speculative and Feminist Design Futures: What would non-extractive, collectively governed, or community-owned reproductive technologies look like?

Privacy, Policy, and Ethics

• Privacy and Data Concerns: What are the risks and ethical dilemmas surrounding data collection, storage, and sharing in reproductive health apps?

• Political and Policy Consequences: How do they intersect with reproductive rights, healthcare policies, and surveillance?

• Commodification of Intimacy: How are bodily rhythms, fertility intentions, and affective disclosures transformed into economic value?

• Sustainability and Material Infrastructures: What are the ecological footprints of wearable devices and data storage infrastructures tied to reproductive tracking?

Comparative and Contextual Studies

• Case Studies: How are reproductive health apps developed, regulated, and used in different countries or cultural contexts?

• Comparative Analyses: How do experiences with reproductive health apps vary across regions, legal frameworks, or healthcare systems?

Submission Guidelines

• Abstract Submission Deadline: 26^th April, 2026. Abstracts (300–500 words) should outline the chapter’s focus, methodology, and contribution to the volume’s themes. Include a brief author bio (100 words) and contact information
• Notification of acceptance: May 3rd, 2026
• Draft Chapter Deadline: September 15, 2026. Contributors submit full draft chapters (6,000–8,000 words).
• Feedback Sent to Contributors: November 1, 2026
• Final chapter deadline: January 15th, 2027
• Final Editorial Review: January 16–March 31, 2027

The book will be published as Diamond Open Access volume via Uppsala University Library’s Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, ensuring global accessibility.