In this talk, Dr Isabelle Higgins will begin with her recently completed PhD research in sociology that explores how children deemed eligible for adoption in the USA have their personal information shared in the public domain. This information, including first names, photographs, details of medical and trauma histories, and racial and gender identity, is shared online by a range of self-describe ‘adoption advocates’, including government agencies and private adoption agencies (Higgins, 2023). Agencies explain that they have designed these sites in an effort to increase the adoption of children classified as ‘hard to place’ on the basis of their age, disability or racial identity. Yet the sharing of personal data about children classified as ‘hard to place’ in the public domain raises serious privacy concerns. These concerns are (re)articulated when one also considers how such children’s personal data is (re)shared and reused in relation to social media algorithms and forms part of generative AI training data. In many locations then, decisions are being made that incorporate, rely upon or draw upon the non-consensual personal data shared about children in state care. To complicate these realities further, some children are adopted by parents who work as social media influencers who monetise their children’s perceived alterity in their online ‘influencing’ work. Higgins’ research examines this disparate range of locations, arguing that together they can be viewed as locations in which intersectionally racialised regimes of power and inequality are (re)produced. To make this argument, she draws on insights from a range of sociological (and adjacent) traditions, including the sociology of ‘race’ and racism, decolonial thought, reproductive sociology, ‘race critical code studies’ and media and cultural studies. Speaker: Dr Isabelle Higgins is a Teaching Associate in Media and Culture and Sociological Theory at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. Details: This is a hybrid event – if you would like to join online, please register for the Zoom link: https://wolfson-cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMrde2rrjotEtIJzmXC8JSy0mjY7D6Q4AG- Access: This event will take place in Gatsby Room on the first floor of the Chancellor's Centre. It has step-free access with a lift and there is an accessible toilet located each floor of the building.