Isabel Côté

Professor in the department of social work at Université du Québec en Outaouais
819-595-3900 poste 2334

Isabel Côté is a professor in the Department of Social Work at Université du Québec en Outaouais. Her research aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of third-party reproduction by combining the perspectives of all the people involved: parents, gamete donors and surrogates, extended families and individuals conceived through gamete donation or surrogacy. Anchored in innovative qualitative methodologies, her work draws from the sociology of the family, kinship anthropology and feminist and LGBTQ+ studies to take a fresh look at contemporary family experiences that remain marginalized today. The agency of children is fully integrated in the construction of knowledge about families created thanks to third-party reproduction. Her research results are mobilized in community and institutional networks through research partnerships with organizations such as the Centre ESPER and the Quebec LGBT+ Family Coalition. Côté is a member of the Comité central d’éthique clinique en procréation médicalement assistée (Quebec central committee on the clinical ethics of medically assisted reproduction). She contributes to social and policy debates, while also promoting the development of tools to better support the well-being of the people involved in third-party reproduction. She is a member of the Partenariat Familles en mouvance (an interdisciplinary partnership for research on families) and of the Réseau québécois en études féministes (RéQEF) (Quebec network for feminist studies). In 2025, she entered the Cercle d’excellence de l’Université du Québec, and the UNIE-LGBTQ research partnership, which she co-directed, received the Academic Prize at the Emergence Gala.

Publications

  • Resigning oneself to resort another woman to have a child: procreative trajectories of Canadian women who became mothers through egg donation or surrogacy

    In Pursuit of Parenthood: Infertility, Assisted Reproductive Technology, and Surrogacy, pp. 195-213, Emerald Publishing Limited (2026)
  • Parents LGBTQ+ au Québec : expériences de microaffirmations et de microagressions au sein des milieux éducatifs fréquentés par leurs enfants

    Enfances Familles Générations (2026)
  • A Portrait of LGBTQ+ Parents in Quebec: Sociodemographic Profile and Pathways to Parenthood

    LGBTQ+ Family: An Interdisciplinary Journal (2026)
  • Les participations des jeunes en recherche : un processus relationnel, dynamique et réflexif au cœur de la reconnaissance de leurs droits et de leur contribution à la transformation de la société

    La participation des enfants et des adolescents en recherche : la co-construction au cœur de pratiques novatrices, p. 1-13, Presses de l’Université Laval (2026)
  • « Que doit-on retenir de l’histoire que tu m’as racontée? » : posture éthique et réflexive de la restitution des résultats de recherche aux enfants et aux jeunes

    La participation des enfants et des adolescents en recherche : la co-construction au cœur de pratiques novatrices, p. 339-349, Presses de l’Université Laval (2026)
  • Analyse intersectionnelle quantitative de l’instabilité résidentielle chez les personnes LGBTQ+

    International Journal on Homelessness (2026) [available in French and English]

Projects

  • From Silence to Vision: a Photovoice Study to Support Resilience in Parents Affected by Prolific Online Sperm Donors 

  • Intergenerational Ties Through the Lens of Third-Party Reproduction

  • Contact: the experiences of gamete donors contacted by their donor offspring

  • Drifts in Donor Conception and Their Impacts on Life Trajectories

  • ACCESS to reproduction for LBP women and QTNB people

  • Adoption Project

Related contents

  • Third-party reproduction beyond stereotypes

    COMMUNICATION Research Team (2026) – Infography from a study by Kévin Lavoie, Isabel Côté and Roxane Guay
  • Summer Institute on Infertility and Assisted Reproduction – 2nd Edition

    The Summer Institute on Infertility and Assisted Reproduction (June 3-5, 2026) is offering advanced training on contemporary issues in assisted reproductive technologies (ART).
  • Let’s talk about infertility: a series about avoiding microaggressions

    COMMUNICATION Research Team & Centre ESPER (2026)
  • Épisode 01 – Faire famille autrement

    Ça s’apprend (2026)
  • Another way to conceive : the Access project video series

    LGBT+ Family Coalition, Canada Research Chair in Third-Party Reproduction and Family Ties, Jeunes, familles et réponses sociales (JEFAR) Research Center (2025)
  • Discussion : Gestation pour autrui 

    Points de repère (2025)