Barbara Sumner

The Illegitimate Other: adoptology and the manufacture of identity. A study of the structures, functions, and purpose of human adoption in society.

PhD awarded 2025

'The Illegitimate Other: Adoption and the Manufacture of Identity' is a hybrid thesis that blends creative writing with critical research. Through a series of essays, it examines the legislative complexities, fallacious ideologies, and systemic forces that shape the lives of all adopted people. A lightly edited version of the thesis, On Human Adoption and the Manufacture of Identity, is available in paperback and ePub at barbarasumner.nz.

Tree of Strangers (Massey University Press), Sumner's 2020 investigative memoir, explores forced stranger adoption. An advocate for adoptee rights, she works to establish birth identity as a fundamental right and to position New Zealand within the global movement for adoptee equality. Sumner is credited with coining the neologism 'adoptology' to define the critical study of adoption's structures, functions, history, and purpose from the perspective of adopted people. In the absence of any critical adoption studies programme at any university in Aotearoa New Zealand, she has helped establish this field outside the academy.

A multi-award-winning, Oscar-shortlisted documentary filmmaker and former magazine features writer, Barbara is also a wife, mother, and grandmother. In 2024, she was a Michael King Writers Centre Resident, and in May 2024, Pantera Press published her historical novel, The Gallows Bird.

She is the founder of Adoptology - Adoption Deconstructed, a weekly Substack publication that empowers adopted people through knowledge. She is also the founder and moderator of a private Facebook community of over 6,000 engaged adoptees, one of the most active adoptee spaces in Aotearoa.

Read more:

Tree of Strangers (Massey University Press)

The Gallows Bird (Pantera Press)

Adoptology - Adoption Deconstructed (Substack)