Gera ter Meulen’s work focuses on making scientific knowledge about fostering and adoption accessible to policy-makers and practitioners. She has both professional and personal experience of intercountry adoption. From 2008 to 2016 she coordinated ADOC, the Knowledge Centre for Adoption and Foster Care at Leiden University, close to the Chair of Adoption Studies, and continued this work in her private Knowledge Bureau ter Meulen. Gera ter Meulen scans the scientific research on adoption and foster care and enables the field to access relevant results through her website, newsflashes and presentations. She was co-organizer of the 2016 EurAdopt conference in Utrecht and for this conference, together with Leiden University she did a survey among 1155 Dutch adult international adoptees on their appraisal of relinquishment and adoption and their satisfaction with life. (ter Meulen et al., 2019). In 2022 she was awarded the Pieter de la Court Prize by the Dutch Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences for her scientific contributions to public debate. She emphasized the importance of a scientific building block for INEA, and, to this end, created a database and review of post-2009 scientific publications relevant to adoption.
ter Meulen, G., Smeets, D., & Juffer, F. (2019). The relation between adult adoptees’ feelings about relinquishment, adoption and satisfaction with life. Adoption & Fostering, 43(2), 192-209. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308575919841754
ter Meulen, G. (2023). Overzicht wetenschappelijke publicaties ten aanzien van afstand en adoptie 2009 tot juli 2022. KennisBureau ter Meulen, voor pleegzorg en adoptie.
