As part of a short series of Coram Society events marking the centenary of the Adoption of Children Act (1926), this ‘Tea and Talk’ invites you to explore how ideas about birth outside marriage have shifted over time, and with what consequences.
Acclaimed historian and author Jane Robinson will draw on her work on illegitimacy to examine long histories of stigma, secrecy, and exclusion. We will also hear from distinguished social policy academic Professor Harriet Ward, Honorary Research Fellow at the Rees Centre, University of Oxford, about the consequences of illegitimacy and her ongoing research on the history of adoption.
The discussion will also consider social attitudes towards birth outside marriage today, as part of Coram’s wider exploration of the social changes that shaped and continue to shape the history of adoption in the UK.
About our speakers
Jane Robinson is an acclaimed author and public speaker who specialises in social history through women’s eyes.
Jane Robinson’s thirteen books include Bluestockings: the Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education; Hearts and Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote, and Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders: the Pioneering Adventures of the First Professional Women, launched on 23 January 2020. A short biography of Josephine Butler was published by SPCK in October 2020. Trailblazer, a major biography of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was published in February 2024, alongside the audiobook read by Jane. She’s currently working on Out of Sight, Out of Mind: a women’s history of madness, featuring a group of C19th and early C20th pioneers who revolutionised the way we treat mental illness today. It’s due out in January 2027.
Harriet Ward is Emeritus Professor of Child and Family Research at Loughborough University and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Rees Centre, University of Oxford.
In 2002 Harriet Ward founded Loughborough’s Centre for Child and Family Research (CCFR), an independently funded research centre designed to produce methodologically sound, policy relevant research on issues concerning children’s social care. She directed the Centre until she stepped down in 2014.
Harriet has over 30 years of experience both as a research director and field researcher, as an adviser to policymakers and service providers, and as a social work practitioner. She was academic adviser to the joint DH/DfE research initiative on safeguarding children and chaired the DfE working party on neglect. She has given invited expert evidence to parliamentary committees and inquiries on looked after children, child and family social work, child protection and foster care. She represents England on the Board of EUSARF (European Scientific Association on Residential and Family Care for Children and Adolescents), and is a founder member of the international network of research on transitions to adulthood from care (INTRAC). In 2019 she co-founded the International Research Network on Infants and Child Protection Systems (https://www.irnicp.org), which she co-directs. She has a EUSARF lifetime achievement award and was awarded a CBE for services to children and families in 2012.
Harriet is currently researching how the adoption of children has developed in this country over the last hundred years for her forthcoming book: A Centenary of Adoption in England and Wales: Present and Future Implications of Past Policy, Practice and Experience (forthcoming) London: Coram.
Book your free ticket
Please join us in person on Coram Campus to explore these issues together, ask questions of our speakers, and enjoy a cup of tea or glass of wine.
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