Lene Koch (born 1947) is a Danish academic researcher,feminist and historian. She was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Centre for Women's Research at theUniversity of Copenhagen which she headed from 1981 to 1985. In the late 1980s, she began to specialize ineugenics, conducting a study intotest tube fertilization in Denmark. In 1988, she succeededNynne Koch as head ofKvinfo, the Danish Centre for Research on Women and Gender. From 1990, she returned to her eugenics research, heading Copenhagen University's Health Services Research Department until she becameprofessor emeritus.[1][2][3]
Born inVirum on 31 July 1947, Lene Koch is the daughter of the library inspector Ole Carl Valdemar Koch (1920–90) and his wife Anna Marie née Ludvigsen (1920–84). In 1972 she gave birth to Nanna ten months later left the father who subsequently cared for her daughter. In 1979 she married the high court judge Henrik Kristian Zahle (born 1943) with whom she gave birth to a second child, Maria.[1]
Raised in an academic,Grundtvig-inspired home, Koch attendedN. Zahle's School, where she was specially interested in physics and chemistry. In 1967, she matriculated fromØregård Gymnasium. After first studyingclassics at theUniversity of Copenhagen, in 1978 she earned a master's degree in English and history. While studying, in the early 1970s she was one of the leading figures in the Students' Council, where she first became interested in women's research.[1]
One of the driving forces behind the University of Copenhagen's increasing interest inwomen's studies, from 1981 to 1985 she managed the institution's newly established Centre for Women's Research (Center for Kvindeforskning). There she took a special interest in American feminist historians, includingLinda Gordon andCarroll Smith-Rosenberg, which she covered in her 1984 anthologyHendes egen verden (published in English asA heritage of her own: Woman's body, woman's right).[4] In 1986, she received a grant from the Management Group for Women's Research (Styringsgruppen for Kvindeforskning) which enabled her to research motherhood in Denmark, examining in particular the artificial insemination ofinfertile women.[1]
In 1988, Lene Koch succeeded Nynne Koch as head of the women and gender research organization, Kvinfo, where she relaunched the journalForum for kvindeforskning (Forum for Women's Research), addressing new trends in women's research. In 1990, she was engaged as a lecturer in health research at Copenhagen University'sPanum Institute. There she has been a major contributor to research on eugenics, hereditary biology andfetal diagnostics, publishing widely on these and related subjects.[1] She headed Copenhagen University's Health Services Research Department until her retirement when she became professor emeritus.[2]
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