The Valley Children: What a Roundtable Revealed about Predictive Genomics, Narrative, and Method
By Caitlin Stobie, (University of Leeds) Lecturer in Creative Writing
This blog post is connected to the event, The Valley Children - How collaborative creative practice can help us make sense of predictive genomics which took place on Friday 20 February 2026.
On 20 February 2026, Oxford Medical Humanities and TORCH hosted a roundtable on The Valley Children, a script-in-development by Felix Westcott exploring a near-future world of newborn genomic prediction. The event was chaired by Alberto Giubilini (Oxford Medical Humanities) and brought together Mehrunisha Suleman (bioethicist and public health researcher), Felix Westcott (playwright and medical student), and Caitlin Stobie (medical humanities researcher and creative writing lecturer) to reflect on how collaborative creative practice might contribute to conversations about predictive genomics.
After a short reading from the script and some methodological framing, the roundtable invited responses from academics, students, and members of the public. Rather than presenting the script as a finished piece of creative work, the session was framed as an experiment: could narrative function not simply as a way of communicating ethical ideas, but as a method for generating them?
Predictive genomics is increasingly associated with promises of earlier diagnosis and better outcomes. At the same time, it introduces a distinct ethical terrain: the management of uncertainty; the moral weight of probabilistic knowledge; and the long shadow of decisions made before a child is even born. These are not new topics for bioethics. What is less settled is how we create settings in which scientists, clinicians, humanities researchers, and publics can interrogate these issues together – not only as public engagement, but as part of research formation.
The roundtable therefore treated the script as a working research object rather than a finished narrative. Instead of asking whether the story ‘worked’, discussion focused on what kinds of questions the script made possible – and what assumptions different audiences brought to it.
Method, not message
One of the clearest threads running through the discussion was the importance of focusing on methodology rather than trying to extract a neat policy message. Participants encouraged us to resist treating the script as a vehicle for delivering the correct ethical conclusion. Instead, the value of the exercise lay in the conversations it generated.
Creative work in biomedical contexts is often positioned as a tool for communication or public engagement. The roundtable suggested something slightly different: that narrative scenarios can operate as structured encounters in which participants test their assumptions, clarify disagreements, and articulate new questions. In this sense, the process itself becomes part of the research.
Several participants suggested that documenting this process could be a valuable output in its own right. Rather than focusing only on policy recommendations, the project may ultimately produce a methodological toolkit for interdisciplinary creative collaboration within the medical humanities. Such a toolkit could help other researchers convene similar conversations across disciplines, sectors, and publics.
Genre as an ethical question
The event also prompted lively discussion about the narrative form of The Valley Children itself. How dystopian should the world of the play be? Is predictive genomics presented as an obviously troubling development, or as something that emerges through ordinary institutional processes?
These questions are not simply literary. The genre of a story shapes the ethical responses it invites. A strongly dystopian framing can lead audiences to condemn the imagined future outright. A more ambiguous or mundane setting can provoke a different reaction: the uneasy recognition that ethically complex systems often become normalised through routine clinical and bureaucratic practices.
Participants suggested experimenting with different narrative strategies. One proposal was to frame the story less as a grand institutional drama and more as what writing guides sometimes call ‘a person with a problem’: characters navigating the practical consequences of genomic knowledge in everyday life. Another suggestion was to explore parallel versions of the same scene – one leaning toward optimism, another toward dystopia – in order to make the ethical stakes of narrative framing more visible.
Bringing other voices into the room
The discussion also raised questions about how the project might involve other stakeholders as it develops. Some participants suggested that engaging policy actors earlier in the process could help test the plausibility of the scenarios and ensure that the narrative remains grounded in real institutional contexts.
At the same time, there was strong agreement that the project should not become a disguised policy exercise. The value of the roundtable lay precisely in the fact that it brought together different forms of expertise – clinical, scientific, creative, and public – without collapsing them into a single authoritative perspective.
A starting point
What emerged from the roundtable was not a set of final answers, but a clearer sense of the project’s direction. The Valley Children is still evolving, both as a script and as a research project. But the discussion demonstrated something important: that narrative can create a shared space in which people from different backgrounds can think together about the ethical implications of predictive genomics.
If the project succeeds, it will not be because it resolves the dilemmas raised by genomic prediction. Rather, it will be because it helps generate richer questions – and brings more voices into the process of asking them.
Medical Humanities Research Hub, TORCH Research Hubs
