Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction

Dear Colleagues,

We seek abstracts for a Special Issue of Genealogy that will focus on intercountry adoption in its post-WWII forms, irrespective of national/ethnic origin or destination. Our Special Issue’s title is meant to suggest that well-laid plans and intentions can work out in unforeseen ways, affecting many more people than the adopted persons and the members of the first family. Of interest are:

• Analyses and comparisons of accounts that may come from any parties involved in post-war intercountry adoptions and that draw on pertinent sources and/or life-cycle documentation (memoirs, letters, diaries, and other life-writing sources).
• Lived experiences that are underpinned by theoretical perspectives and that engage with the current critical literature and scholarship and/or archival or other kinds of “elusive” sources.
• Analyses of more creative interpretations, whether critical or not, e.g., novels drawing on intercountry adoption.
• Explorations of post-WWII cross-border adoptions in popular media.
• Analyses of personal, communal, national, political, diplomatic, legal, cultural, and other conditions, whether prevalent at the time that the “historical” adoptions took place or dominant in more recent decades.
• Analyses or reports on country-focused longitudinal investigations.
• Papers examining current adoptee activism.
• Papers exploring root searches, reunions with biological parents, and/or post-reunion relationships. Of special interest are the voices of the adopted persons themselves, who have traditionally been less represented than the adoptive parents.

Please send an English-language abstract of maximum 350 words to Prof. Gonda Van Steen. Make sure that the abstract also addresses your methodology. The abstract should be received no later than 1 May 2025. The authors of abstracts will be notified of a decision by 25 May 2025. Full manuscript submissions will be invited by 1 September 2025 and need to be submitted in the template of the journal on the Genealogy MDPI platform. Manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review and follow the regular procedures of the journal Genealogy. Ideally, final manuscripts should be between 7000 and 10,000 words, and illustrations are welcome (with the proper permissions).

Prof. Dr. Gonda Van Steen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• child adoption
• post-WWII intercountry adoption
• adoption archives
• lived experience
• adoptee search and reunion