Doctoral Dissertation Research: Kinship Relations and Genetic Testing Technologies among Adult Adoptees

The introduction of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetics testing has radically altered the landscape of birth family search. The research supported by this award will investigate the scales at which DNA testing reinforces or challenges existing frameworks of family, identity, citizenship, and belonging. Ethnographically, it focuses on the discourses, practices, and policies surrounding DTC genetic testing technologies used by adult adoptees.

In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, the researcher will produce a guidebook for policymakers, government officials, social workers, educators, and fellow researchers to understand the implications of genetic testing and the birth family search experience.

This doctoral dissertation research project asks how DNA testing reinforces or challenges existing frameworks of family, identity, citizenship, and the nation, focusing on a research context with a historically high concentration of adoptions and the proliferating use of DTC genetic testing technologies among those adoptees. Participant observation will be carried out with four organizations that offer genetic testing services to adoptees and birth families.

DNA testing has the potential to expose trauma on individual, familial, and national scales, as well as raise significant social, legal, and moral questions. Across this network of social actors and institutions, this research asks how DNA is being imagined, constructed, and deployed to produce personal and public knowledge of identity, kinship, citizenship, belonging, and memory.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.