Infants and Institutions:
Representations and Memories of Residential Homes in Twentieth-Century Europe
International Conference funded by AHRC Network Grant
Institutions and Infant Care: Foundling Homes and Residential Homes for Babies in Twentieth-Century Europe
London Foundling Museum
40 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ
Study Studio
15-16 May 2025
PROGRAMME
THURSDAY 15th of May
9.30 Coffee
9.50-10.00 Welcome
10.00-11.00 Fostering and the Workhouse: Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Practices
Judy Bolger (Trinity College, Dublin), ‘”Strong Impressions are Made by the Sad Cases that are Known of Infants Born in the Workhouse”: Illegitimacy and Infant Care in the Early Twentieth-Century Irish Workhouse’
Kate Brooks (Bath Spa University), ‘Mrs Tonks and Me: Historical and Personal Perspectives of Foster Caring’
11.00-12.30 Personal, Family, and Material Legacies
Laura McAtackney (University College Cork), ‘Remembering Institutions and Institutional Abuse: Guerilla Memorialization, Official Museums and Sites of Conscience’
Delyth Edwards (University of Leeds), ‘“It Was Through Some Iron Railing Bars”: The Architecture, Practice and Legacy of Separating Infant Siblings in Care’
Rosie Canning (Independent Researcher), ‘Not in the Family Way: Stigma, Care, and the Enduring Legacy of Post-War British Institutions’
12.30-13.30 Lunch (with Izaac Elliott and Alison Lowry)
13.30-14.30 KEYNOTE
Nelleke Bakker (University of Groningen), ‘Institutional Care for Infants in Dutch Mother and Baby Homes and the Impact of Psychiatry (c. 1955-1975)’
14.30-15.00 Coffee
15.00-15.30 'Failure to Thrive’ by Alice Kinsella: a work-in-progress reading and performance
15.30-17.00 Residential Care: Criticism and Reform
Maren Zeller (Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences), ‘The Discourse on the Hospitalization of Infants in Switzerland’
María José Ferrari (IE University, Segovia), ‘Exposing Foundling Hospitals and Orphanages in Francoist Spain (1967 and 1970)’
Katie Joice (Birkbeck, University of London), ‘Empty Frames: The Institutionalised Infant in Postwar Documentary Film’
FRIDAY 16th of May
9.30 Coffee
9.45-11.15 Media Scandals and Forgotten Stories: Navigating Institutional Legacies
Michael Lambert (University of Lancaster), ‘Stephen’s Story: Public Histories, Institutional Legacies and Unwanted Memories of an English Mother and Baby Home’
Isabelle Hollingdale (University of Leeds), ‘Coming to Terms with Historical Child Removal in Spain’
Felix Berth (German Youth Institute, Munich), ‘Institutional Care Scandals: Media Debates on Infant Homes in Germany in the Late 20th Century’
11.15-12.30 ROUNDTABLE The Museum: Between Representation, Memory, and Public History
Emma Ridgway (The London Foundling Museum), Antonella Schena and Arabella Natalini (Istituto degli Innocenti, Florence), Sarah Smed (The Danish Welfare Museum, Svensborg). Chair: Laura McAtackney (University College Cork)
12.30-13.30 Lunch
13.30-14.30 Britain’s War Nurseries and their Legacies
Siân Pooley (University of Oxford) and Katherine Kerr (National Trust), ‘Castle Drogo and the Legacies of Residential War Nurseries in Britain’s Country Houses’
Lucy Bland (Anglia Ruskin University) and Chamion Caballero (The Mixed Museum), ‘Holnicote House and the Placing of Mixed-Race Babies in Second World War Britain: A Site of Safety or Containment?’
14.30-15.30 War, Totalitarianism, and its Legacies after 1945
Andrew Kloes (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) and Aleksandra Pomiecko (King’s College London), ‘Polish and Soviet Infants in Nazi Germany: The “Nurseries” for the Children of Forced Laborers in History and Memory’
Agnes Arndt (Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at the TU Dresden), ‘A Forgotten History? Remembering and Reconstructing Infant Care in Postwar Germany’
15.30-16.00 Coffee
16.00-16.30 Mariela Neagu (Manchester Metropolitan University), ‘”The Industrialisation of the Womb”: Institutionalisation and Epistemic Injustice in Communist and Post-Communist Romania’
16.30-17.30 Institutions for Babies in the Twentieth-Century City
Georgina Laragy (Trinity College, Dublin), ‘”Little Short of an Outrage”: The Home for Babies in Belfast, 1901-1914’
Claire Phillips (The Open University in Wales and Aberystwyth University), ‘Infant Care in the London Foundling Hospital, 1900-1955’