International Conference

8 to 10 January 2025 / Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg (Germany)

Venue: Festung Mark, Hohepfortewall 1, 39104 Magdeburg

Prof. Dr. Bettina Hitzer (director of the Institute "History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine", Magdeburg)

Prof. Thomas Lindenberger (former director of Hannah-Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies, Dresden)

Adoption is a controversial issue, more so today than ever before. Criticism is aimed at all facets of this “kinship by design” (Ellen Herman, 2008). The heated debate is not only concerned with the conditions determining whether adoption is in the best interest of the child. The family, social and population policy logic behind the concept of adoption is also increasingly being called into question. Adoption as a humanitarian intervention is ever more challenged. Reappraisal projects initiated by activists are shedding light on the colonial and post-colonial interests that often lurk behind the adoption project - with all their potentially brutal implications that disregard the rights of children and their biological parents.

The conference will focus on the following aspects of adoption policies:

• adoption as an instrument of those in power to weaken and destroy family ties and social resources of political opponents and their milieus, both in domestic and international conflicts
• adoption as a means of disempowering and disintegrating marginalized social groups and ethnicities in colonial and post-colonial societies, but also in modern welfare state systems
• adoption and the politics of transitional justice in post-autocratic transformation processes
• the significance of international adoptions for networks of humanitarian aid and care and their relationship to political and social inequalities and (postcolonial) power asymmetries
• the interdependence of national and international adoption policies
• the relationship between state and non-governmental sector and private actors in the field of adoption as well as their potentially divergent goals and interests

Please find the conference program here

Guests are welcome to attend. The conference fee is €80 (with lunch catering) or €30 (without lunch catering). Please register by December 16, indicating your chosen option (with or without lunch), to Annett Göth: