Our Adoption Project: Conversations-Reading the Rulebook + Beyond the Shorthand- Talkaoke with Kriti Khurana

Reading the Rulebook + Beyond the Shorthand- Talkaoke with Kriti Khurana Kriti is a PhD researcher in Social Work at the University of Kent. Her PhD looks at transracial adoption in England: what it's like to grow up adopted into a family of a different race or ethnicity, and how questions of identity and belonging follow people through their lives. She's exploring this from three angles. She's tracing how government policy on race and adoption has changed over the past thirty years. She's talking with the social workers who make placement decisions. And she's listening to adoptees tell their life stories in their own words. Beyond the Shorthand is a talk and open conversation about the phrases adoption gets told in, and what sits underneath them. Reading the Rulebook is a hands-on workshop where you'll read real extracts from adoption law and policy, then black them out, annotate them, rewrite them or write back to them. No academic background needed. Just come curious! About Kriti Kriti started out studying philosophy at Miranda House in Delhi, then did a master's in psychology at Cardiff University. Before her PhD, she worked at CASCADE, a children's social care research centre at Cardiff University, on research into how services in Wales respond to children who are exploited by criminal gangs. Across all of it, she's been drawn to one question: how do the systems meant to care for children shape who they become? "My doctoral research explores transracial adoption in England through three strands: an analysis of adoption policy, interviews with adoption social workers, and life history interviews with adult adoptees. A thread running through all three is how adoptees' lives get flattened into simplified categories and dominant discourse patterns, in policy, in practice and in public narratives, which felt very close to what your call describes." About Talkaoke Talkaoke is a live, television-style talk show format developed by The People Speak art collective from East London. It is a unique way to hear the latest ideas people are talking about and to discover new ones together. The conversation is a creative medium and a journey from one unexpected subject to another. It can be topical, funny, deep, surreal, or something else. The participants generate the subjects and the host in the middle keeps everybody engaged. Picture a doughnut-shaped table with a mic in the middle, like a chat show set, except there’s no host telling you what to think and no script deciding what’s “on topic.” Whoever’s holding the mic steers the conversation. People rotate in and out. Strangers end up talking to strangers about things that actually matter to them, face to face, in real time — not through a screen, not through an algorithm deciding what they get to see. For more information on Talkaoke and The People Speak you can check out their website Link to our FAQs + Safeguarding statement