News

2025

March and April 2025

Members of the Disability Matters are working hard on plans for different phases of the Disability Matters programme. We are capturing some of our conceptual thinking in contributions to iHuman's Disability Dialogues 

And Ankita Mishra provides us with an update on Building Bridges in Disability Matters 

Dan Goodley has published a paper with Kirsty Liddiard and Rebecca Lawthom which draws on bureaucratic reflections  from the Disability Matters and Humanising Healthcare projects and is published in the Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research - The Depathologising University

January 2025

Happy 2025! You might have missed this news feature on the University of Toronto website; Tanya Tichkosky and Elaine Cagulada share their aspirations for the research programme. 

We also welcome a new member to our team - Jodi Lamanna - who will be working with Jackie Leach Scully at the Disability Innovation Institute, University of New South Wales.

We are delighted to announce that Jackie Leach Scully has been has been named as one of the Australian Academy of the Humanities Fellows for 2024 and Dan Goodley has been made a Fellow of the British Academy.

2024

December 2024

We are back with another Online Symposia! Please join us on 11th December 3pm GMT for talks from @jiya_pandya, @vishinair5 and @_AnkitaMishra on disability in the geopolitical south. For more details and to register please visit: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/disabilitymatters/1451083 

November 2024

UK event: Crip Kinship, kindness and crisis of care lecture

Disability Matters Research Associate Dr Christina Lee will be giving this lecture Hosted by UEA's MA Medical and Health Humanities and MA Gender Studies in partnership with CreativeUEA and HealthUEA. More details here.

To trial arrangements around the institute and summer school, the Disability Matters team have teamed up with Aarhus University to deliver an Engaging with Critical Disability Studies: New Perspectives and Established Dilemmas, 14 - 15 November 2024.

Canada event: The Imaginaries of Autistic Non-Verbal Communication
Thursday October 17th, from 2pm - 3:30pm

The Centre for Global Disability Studies (CGDS) at the University of Toronto is excited to announce our annual Critical Conversations Series for 2024. The Critical Conversations series from the Centre for Global Disability Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) brings together scholars, activists, and researchers to discuss timely issues that impact global disability justice. The Critical Conversations Series seeks to uphold the Centre for Global Disability Studies values of promoting accessibility in academic conversations, building interdisciplinary community, and supporting anti-ableist scholarship and activism that furthers anti-colonial and transnational perspectives. ASL and CART captioning will be provided for both events. 

Please reach out to cgds.utsc.@utoronto.ca with any other questions or access requests. 

Registration: https://forms.office.com/r/dhLSi4RxkL

Panel Description: This panel conversation will act as an introduction to the richness and complexity of autistic non-verbal communication. The focus of the conversation will be on how biomedical approaches to autistic communication attempt to delegitimise, manage, correct, and fix its perceived inadequacies. All of this is done with the aim of bringing it closer to the structures of oral speech. In a relational act of resistance, the panel will trace acts of communication across academia, lived experience, and poetry, slowly exploring how communication is perceived and experienced by autistic people.

The panel will run as a 1-hour panel conversation and 30-minute Q&A (1.5 hours total), with some time afterwards.

 [Image Description: a poster with a black background and purple across the top. The CGDS logo sits in the top left corner with the title "Critical Conversation Series". Panel Title: Imaginaries of Autistic Non-Verbal Communication. Panel Date/Time/Location Information: Thursday, October 17, 2024, 2:00pm - 3:30pm EST, Virtual event hosted via Zoom webinar. The bottom left of the image shows the individual headshots of the four panelists with their name and affiliation. Headshot image of the moderator on the bottom right of poster with name and affiliation. Panelists from top left clockwise to bottom left: Dr. Aparna Nair, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto. Image shows an Indian woman with long brown hair smiling into the camera. Sid Gosh, autistic poet and levitator of language. Image shows a young Indian man with short brown hair, glasses and surrounded by books looking into the camera. Dr. Vaish Sarathy, Learning strategist/Educator/Parent. Image shows an Indian woman with long dark hair resting her face on her hand and smiling into the camera. Aparna Raghu Menon, PhD Student, University of Toronto. Image shows an Indian woman with short dark hair smiling into the camera. Moderator:  Dr. Tanya Titchkosky, Professor, University of Toronto. Image shows a white woman with blonde hair and bangs smiling into the camera.] 

We look forward to you joining us for this event!

October 2024 

Be Cancer Aware Launches 

We launch Be Cancer Aware, a film showcasing the amazing co-production work being done at Sunderland People First. This film was made in collaboration with Sunderland People First, Humanising Healthcare, and Disability Matters filmmaker Joanna Tobbell. 

Read more and watch the film 

September 2024

Our Team Grows

Each of the University programme sites boast a number of emerging scholars and research associates:

• University of Sheffield - Dr Ankita Mishra and Dr Christina Lee
• University of Toronto - Dr Elaine Cagulada

Rhea Halsey and Dan Goodley represented the Disability Matters Programme at the Disability Studies Conference in the University of Leeds this month. More details here

August 2024

We have now collated all papers and recordings of our 2023-24 Online Symposia here 

June 2024

Our Sixth Online Symposium, from Singapore, was held on the 5th June - A link to the script and written papers

May 2024

Rhea Halsey and Dan Goodley presented papers on behalf of the Disability Matters programme at the 2nd International Conference on Disability Studies: Disability Matters: Critically Examining Disablism and Ableism: A collaboration between the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Education, Department of Primary Education, School of Education, University of Sheffield, and iHuman, University of Sheffield

April 2024

We are happy to report on two publications from the Disability Matters programme.

Depathologising the University

Dan Goodley's paper (2024). Depathologising the university. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2024.2316007, develops a conversation with decolonisation to pitch a novel mode of engagement; depathologising the university.  The paper is Gold Open Access and available here

Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Disability Studies h

The Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Disability Studies has been published (March 2024). Led, curated and driven by Dr Tsitsi Chataika - with editorial input from Disability Matters's Dan Goodley - this exciting new text challenges the Western, European and North American tendencies of critical disability studies through centring and exploring postcolonial theory. 

The edited volume explores issues of power, economics, politics, religion and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial supremacy. It argues that disability is a constitutive material presence in many postcolonial societies and that progressive disability politics arise from postcolonial concerns. By drawing these two subjects together, this handbook challenges oppression, voicelessness, stereotyping, undermining, neo-colonisation and postcolonisation and bridges binary debate between global North and the global South.

The book is divided into eight sections

1. Setting the Scene
2. Decolonising Disability Studies
3. Postcolonial Theory, Inclusive Development
4. Postcolonial Disability Studies and Disability Activism
5. Postcolonial Disability and Childhood Studies
6. Postcolonial Disability Studies and Education
7. Postcolonial Disability Studies, Gender, Race and Religion
8. Conclusion

And comprised of 27 newly written chapters, this book leads with postcolonial perspectives – closely followed by an engagement with critical disability studies – with the explicit aim of foregrounding these contributions; pulling them in from the edges of empirical and theoretical work where they often reside in mainstream academic literature.

The book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies and postcolonial studies as well as those working in sociology, literature and development studies.

More details can be found here

March 2024

Our busy period of scholarship continued this month. An online symposium with presentations from our colleagues at the University of Toronto. This was another great session, which we recorded and collated papers: check out this link.

Dan Goodley presented a paper to the University of Manchester's Psychology, Communication and Human Neuroscience (PCHN) Spring seminar on 6th March 2024. 

Visiting researcher Ethan Patrick reflected on disability researchers through a blog posted here

February 2024

The Disability Matters team were in Delhi this month to meet with colleagues in Ambedkar University and disabled activists. During our team we hosted the latest online symposium - recording and papers can be accessed here

2023

December 2023

This month has been one of connection. We have been blown away by the positive response to our Online Symposia. Over 300 people signed up to our three events - and you can find film recordings and copies of presenters' papers here.

November 2023

New publication - Goodley, D. (2023). Disability and medical posthumanities. Interconnections: Journal of Posthumanism. Acknowledges Disability Matters as a space in which colleagues are grappling with the pull and push of humanism and posthumanism.

We are working hard in the background preparing for our December Online Symposia. More news to follow

October 2023

First Online Symposia events announced
Our first event is now live! Join us in December for a series of Online Symposia. We'll be welcoming 12 different disability studies presenters from around the world to explore how their work has been transformed by engaging with critical disability studies.

Book your free ticket now at:

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/disabilitymatters

Overview of speakers

Mon 4 Dec 2023 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM GMT, Online, Zoom

Barbara Gibson

Barbara Gibson BMR(PT), MSc, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research and scholarship examine the intersections of social, cultural, and institutional practices in producing health, inclusion/exclusion, and identity with disabled young people.

Janice McLaughlin

Professor Janice McLaughlin works to explore how childhood disability or illness is framed from within the worlds of medicine, community and family. Her work has developed through partnership with disabled children and their families, organisations that advocate with them and other researchers. She examines the intersections of inequality, citizenship, identity, embodiment and care.

Sarah Glerup

Sarah Glerup is a Danish activist, speaker and writer with a particular interest in human rights and social development, particularly minority issues and inclusion. She offers regular media contributions around numerous issues including accessibility (such as wheelchair access etc.).

Tue 5 Dec 2023 8:00 AM - 9:15 AM GMT, Online, Zoom

Shaun Grech

Shaun Grech is a Senior Academic Consultant in Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction with CBM, director of The Critical Institute (Malta) and editor in chief of the international journal, Disability and the Global South. His critical interdisciplinary work looks at disability in contexts of rural poverty, disasters and humanitarian settings.

Jan Grue

Jan Grue is a professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo. He is currently PI of the research project “The Politics of Disability Identity”, which investigates the contemporary social and cultural preconditions of disability inclusion. His memoir “I Live a Life Like Yours” (2021) is published by Pushkin Press in the UK.

Gareth Thomas

Gareth M. Thomas is a Reader in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, UK. He is a sociologist interested in disability, health/illness, medicine and reproduction.


Mon 11 Dec 2023 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM GMT, Online, Zoom

Christina Lee

Christina Lee (she/her) recently completed her PhD in English and Medical Humanities at King’s College London. Her thesis was titled ‘The Care of the Dis-ease Self: A Foucauldian Reading of Buddhist Meditation Memoirs as Narratives of Healing’. Her research looks at experiences of illness and disability, embodiment, and intersectionality.

Stuart Murray

Stuart Murray is Professor of Contemporary Literatures and Film in the School of English at the University of Leeds. He has worked in Critical Disability Studies for over 20 years, written/edited multiple books and articles on disability representation, and was among the very first University academics to teach courses on disability, literature, film and cultural theory.

Sana Rizvi 

Dr Sana Rizvi is a Senior Lecturer in Education and Early Childhood Studies at Liverpool John Moores University. She is passionate about teaching on the subjects of racial inequalities in education, critical perspectives on disability studies and inclusive education, and on qualitative methodologies. She has presented her research at several international and national conferences, and has also published research in the field of research methods, racial inequality and disability studies.

Tue 12 Dec 2023 8:00 AM - 9:15 AM GMT, Online, Zoom

Hannah Morgan

Hannah is Associate Professor in the Centre for Disability Studies, University of Leeds, whose research and scholarship is located at the intersection of Social Policy and Disability Studies and is particularly concerned with the experiences of disabled people who use health and social care services and with professional practice(s) in this sphere.

Kate Sang

Professor Kate Sang of the Heriot-Watt University Business School leads the multidisciplinary EDI Caucus team which is, in part, promoting disability inclusion across the higher education institution sector.

Geert Van Hove

Geert Van Hove is an Emeritus Professor at Ghent University (Disability Studies). For the last 25 years, he has been closely involved with families involving their child with disabilities into mainstream schools and with the Flemish Self-advocacy movement. He is a basketball-lover, a jazz cat and a passionate cyclist. 

September 2023
DISABILITY MATTERS FORMALLY LAUNCHED!

Its September 2023 and this month Disability Matters officially kicks off. Our co-investigators tell us a little about themselves and their hopes and aspirations for this ambitious six year programme.

As part of our launch the Programme Manager Rhea Halsey has been busy helping to put together some welcome films from the Investigators. You can find subtitled films from our co-investigators on our Twitter/X @Dismatters and our Instagram disability_matters

We also have a new project email - disabilitymatters@sheffield.ac.uk - please get in touch if you'd like to learn more about the programme.

Finally as part of a rolling out of Disability Matters, Dan Goodley was invited to present as part of a panel on Inclusive Leadership at the EDIS2023 event at the Francis Crick institute in London. Dan joined Hamied Haroon, the Chair of National Association of Disabled Staff Networks, to lobby for the centralisation of disabled people in the conceptualisation and management of research. More details of the EDIS2023 event can be found here
 

July 2023
Access Collective, Delhi, India

Dear all, 
Happy Disability Pride!

July is Disability Pride month - officially for the US, unofficially for the rest of the world, and regardless of nationality, a time for celebration of disability identity, solidarity, and community. As two disabled people writing this, we're predictably quite jazzed about it too, insufficient formal disability support in the country aside. We wanted to start off something called the "Access Collective". We think of it as a way for disabled folks to hang out together, claim public space, experience community, and do some disability awareness just by existing, this time on our own terms. 

What is the Access Collective?
A bunch of disabled folks. Chatting (or just lurking, if that's more your thing). Over coffee. Together. Probably bimonthly, in Delhi. That's it. 

We've all experienced what we think of as "liberated zones" online, haven't we? Accessible spaces where disabled people meet, think, talk, and life-hack together. Having experienced community and solidarity with disabled people in cyberspace, we wanted that experience to carry over to public places in our surroundings as well. 

Disabled people don't often loiter in public spaces, because we don't have an infrastructural and attitudinal framework that precisely welcomes disabled body-minds. But the most important reason why we wanted to form the Access collective? Because ableism kills through isolation. We know it. You know it. One of our elderly relatives who's started to experience mobility issues knows it. This blind second-grader we recently met whose parents are both working people knows it. So what do we do about it? If our country's infrastructure doesn't let us go have coffee all on our own, we'll go have it together, and explore all the ways in which disabled folks organize in revolutionary obscurity. "Community is magic", after all, as Alice Wong says. Let's do this, one coffee at a time. 

Here are details for the first access collective:
When: Sunday, July 30th, 2023 at 4:00pm
Where: Cafe Coffee Day, S-34, Green Park Main Market, Delhi.

We realize this is short notice, but we also wanted to meet up before the end of Disability Pride Month. Please join us, if you can spare the spoons. We would love to have you. The location is pinned and can be easily found on Uber or Google Maps for convenience. A confirmation of presence by 12:00pm Saturday would be really appreciated. Also, we'll pick the venue for the next access collective together this Sunday. Please feel free to reach out to us at access.collective23@gmail.com with your confirmations, queries, ideas, or just to say hi! 

Warm regards,

The Access Collective Team

Sandeep R. Singh and Aparna Sachdev

July 2023
Conference Season

As conference season continues the Disability Matters team ponder some of the possibilities of our research programme - Disability as driving subject

June 2023
Depathologising the Curriculum 

As we prepare for the September launch of Disability Matters, members of the team have been exploring the meaning and practice of depathologisation in research and scholarship. This concept holds great potential for challenging the disability-as-deficit orthodoxy that plagues much of contemporary knowledge exchange. Check out two recent contributions:

Depathologising the curriculum

and

Disability and depathologisation are not metaphors

 

May 2023
Disability Matters in Iceland

Dan Goodley offered a soft international launch of the Disability Matters programme during a session to the Nordic Network of Disability Research which was held in Iceland this year. For many this was a first time to reconnect with critical disability studies scholars post-pandemic.

critical disability studies logo

Dan joined other members of the Critical Disability Studies team to present on their research and scholarship.

A flyer introducing our work with links to project websites can be found here

April 2023
Disability Matters: Podcast

Conversations about Arts, Humanities and Health is a series of free, online events where scholars, health professionals, and the public discuss how arts and humanities can inform healthcare. Hosted by The University of Kent and with the support of the Churchill Foundation, these events seek to develop meaningful dialogue and connection between humanities and medicine. Dan Goodley joined colleague Kirsty Liddiard to discuss the ways in which Disability Matter's Scholarship work offers a paradigm shift to disability as driving subject in the medical humanities. A link to the podcast can be found here

March 2023
Disability and the EDI Agenda

A polyphony article that offers a provocation challenging Equality, Diversity and Inclusion discourse from a critical disability studies perspective - written by Dan Goodley and Kirsty Liddiard.