Accessibility statement

Dr Marilyn Crawshaw

BSc (Soc) (London), CQSW and DipApplSocStudies (Sheffield), MA (Bradford), PhD (York)

  • Honorary Fellow

Areas of expertise

  • Impact of assisted reproduction on individual and family life over the lifespan, in particular where this involves donor assisted conception and surrogacy arrangements
  • Knowledge transfer
  • I also have close links with NGOs in Uganda and Pakistan working variously on HIV/AIDS and community development work with women and children. For many years, I was responsible for arranging social work field placements in Uganda, but these are currently suspended.
  • Within all these areas, I am especially interested in human rights aspects.

Academic biography

One key strand to my research and teaching has been to further understanding of personal experience, especially in the fields of donor assisted conception, surrogacy and adoption, and of teenage and young adult cancer.  There is growing awareness of the psycho-social implications both of new family forms resulting from reproductive technologies and of surviving cancer treatment (including where this results in fertility impairment).  I have conducted several studies that attempt to extend such understanding by, for example, looking at the experiences of donor-conceived adults searching for information about their genetic relatives, parents’ intentions regarding openness with their donor conceived children, the effectiveness of adoption preparation systems, social workers’ experiences with Parental Order applications following surrogacy, the transition to adulthood following cancer and comparative experiences of cancer-related fertility impairment across ethnic and religious contexts.

The other main strand to my work is knowledge-informed practice.  For many years, I ran a regional ‘arm’ of Making Research Count, working with social services and health to enable them to make more effective use of findings from research and from experiences of professionals, service users and carers.  Here at York we developed a unique model of delivery, informed by social work education experiences and systemic approaches.  Understanding how individual practitioners integrate new knowledge into their practice has aided understanding of similar processes at team, agency and inter agency level.  

Professional activities

  • Chair of British Association of Social Workers multi-agency group PROGAR (Project Group on Assisted Reproduction)
  • Editor, Practice Guide Series for British Infertility Counselling Association and Life Member
  • Member of UK Birth Registration Reform Group
  • Chair, UK Friends of Khwendo Kor, Pakistan
  • Adviser to Positive Men’s Union of Uganda (POMU)
  • Joint co-ordinator of the Friends of the Protective Fellows Scheme for Human Rights Defenders at Risk and Member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York
  • Member of organising group for: York Disability Week and York International Women's Week programme
  • Executive Member for York Human Rights City Network and member of the city's Human Rights and Equalities Board

Contact details

Dr Marilyn Crawshaw
Honorary Fellow
School for Business and Society

Tel: 01904 702060