Jesse Olzynko-Gryn, Photocredit: Jonathan Young

Jesse Olzynko-Gryn, Photocredit: Jonathan Young 

People

Jesse Olszynko-Gryn

Research Scholar
Dr.

Jesse Olszynko-Gryn is Head of the Laboratory for Multimodal History in the Department on Knowledge Systems and Collective Life. His research converges on the history of reproduction, technology, and communication in Britain and the United States since around 1900.

He is the author of the book, A Woman’s Right to Know: Pregnancy Testing in Twentieth-Century Britain (MIT Press, 2023), as well as articles and chapters on time-lapse cinematography, science fiction cinema, feminist health activism, and contraceptive technologies. He has co-edited two special issues: "Reproduction on Film" (British Journal for the History of Science, 2017) and "Reproductive Politics in Twentieth-Century France and Britain" (Medical History, 2019).

Olszynko-Gryn received his doctorate in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge in 2014. He subsequently held positions as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University, where he remains an affiliated scholar, and as a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. He has worked as a visiting scholar in the Department of History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University, a visiting fellow at the French Institute for Advanced Studies in Lyon, and a visiting lecturer at Paris-Panthéon-Assas University.

Features and Digital Resources

Projects

Communities of Reproductive Knowledge

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CORAL: Commoning Oral Histories of Knowledge

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Living Knowledge

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Risky Hormones: A Project in Partnership with Patient Groups

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Selected Publications

Olszynko-Gryn, Jesse, Anja Suter, Edmund Bolger, and Birgit Nemec (2026). “Learning with Patient Campaigners About a German Drug Scandal.” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 49 (1): 50–65. https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.70014.

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Ellis, Patrick and Jesse Olszynko-Gryn (2024). “Communicating Overpopulation to a Global Audience: Disney’s Family Planning (1968).” Journal of Global History 19 (3): 439–462. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022824000068.

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Olszynko-Gryn, Jesse (2023). A Woman’s Right to Know: Pregnancy Testing in Twentieth-Century Britain. Inside Technology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/13917.001.0001.

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Nemec, Birgit and Jesse Olszynko-Gryn (2022). “The Duogynon Controversy and Ignorance Production in Post-thalidomide West Germany.” Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online 14: 75–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rbms.2021.09.003.

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Past Events

Working Group

The World at Their Fingertips: German Teachers and International Encounters in the GDR

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Film Screening

Film Screening: The Land Beneath Our Feet

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Workshop

Living Knowledge: Ethics, Practice, and Community in Multimodal History

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Panel Discussion

Panel Discussion: Making Historical Knowledge that Matters

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Talk

Oral-History.Digital: Risky Hormones

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Talk

Conserving Community-based Palestinian Environmental Knowledge

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Meeting

The Pharmacologist’s Dilemma: Thalidomide, Abortion, and Medical Ethics in Women’s Healthcare

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Meeting

The March: A Prayer from Mining Mountains

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Meeting

Between Wonder and Evidence: The International Festival of Scientific and Educational Film

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News & Press

In Pictures: Researchers Pitch at MPIWG's Summer Publications Slam

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Interview on NursingClio with Research Scholar Jesse Olszynko-Gryn about the history of pregnancy testing

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Wellcome Collection quotes Jesse Olszynko-Gryn on the history of pregnancy testing

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