RELI-GENE
Governing Health, Family and Religion:
The Biopolitics of Genetic Counselling
and Religious Family Formations
What is RELI-GENE?
RELI-GENE is an interdisciplinary project that examines how state-led genetic healthcare policies intersect with religious and cultural practices in close-knit religious minority communities, including Jewish, Christian and Muslim groups, particularly around consanguineous and endogamous marriages. Through a comparative analysis, RELI-GENE offers a new approach to understanding how state regulations, communal norms and individual agency shape contemporary family-making.
Why RELI-GENE is important
It offers a new model for understanding the governance of life itself, by combining intersectional, biopolitical, and governmentality frameworks with participatory and digital methodologies. It explores how genetic knowledge, religious beliefs, and political agendas shape personhood and what it means to be a healthy, moral, and responsible individual.
RELI-GENE is distinguished by its transnational scope, comparative approach and people-centred perspective on how genetic knowledge reshapes family life, moral responsibilities and belonging within religious communities across borders.