Transforming EDI through disability

Leads: Christina Lee and Dan Goodley (University of Sheffield)

Throughout all six years of the programme we will generate knowledge exchange that informs policy, strategy and practice of health research and research culture. We will capture and disseminate EDI in relation to inclusive scholarship, disabled people’s health priorities, participatory research methodologies, positive research cultures, affirmative disability representation and early career researcher development.

We ask the questions:

• What transformative knowledge pertaining to equity, diversity and inclusion can be generated through a focus on anti-ableist and anti-disablist practice?
• In what ways might Disability Matters inform health, research, science and university sectors?
• What kinds, formats and types of knowledge might we embrace to ensure that disability is front and centre of health, research and science? 

We will host annual Online Townhalls aimed at science and health funders, policy makers and researchers based across universities, NGOs and DPOs supplemented by a series of Knowledge Exchange Workshops with EDI teams. We will increase international reach of knowledge through a series of International Satellite events - led by the PI and NADSN - aimed at similar audiences in Singapore, Toronto, Delhi, Sydney and London. And, we will share emergent policy and strategy findings at six International Conferences addressing Medicine, Medical Humanities, Medical Sociology, Higher Education, Science and Technology Studies.

Online town halls

The Disability Matters online town hall circus is a series of annual knowledge exchange events. The online town hall forms part of the knowledge exchange activities for Phase 7 which focuses on transforming equity, diversity, and inclusion through disability. The first town hall circus event will be led by the Sheffield team.

“A group of puffins is known as a circus, an improbability, a colony, a burrow and a gathering.” (Yorkshire Wildlife Trust 2021)

Town halls are increasingly used by universities as platforms for sharing key messaging, providing policy updates, and gathering feedback from staff and students. However, town halls are often inaccessible to disabled people and tend to favour individuals from dominant groups while excluding minority groups.

Taking inspiration from the social lives of birds to think creatively about town halls and the kind of gatherings we want to create, we are turning the online town hall into a circus. At the online town hall circus, we will experiment with other ways of being together to reimagine how these gatherings might be transformed into accessible spaces that cultivate joy, wonder, and care. Read our blog on the concepts and metaphors behind the town hall event.

The first town hall event was led by the Sheffield team on Zoom on the 19th September 12-1.30pm BST. It asked the question ‘How does centring disability drive innovative change and expand equity, diversity and inclusion in health research?’  Watch the recording and read the script here.

Knowledge Exchange Workshops

The Knowledge Exchange workshops will bring together people with shared values across sectors to reimagine an inclusive future of health research and serve as springboards for ideas and further actions for expanding disability inclusion in EDI.  By centring disability and disabled knowledge, we want to disrupt conventionally exclusionary practices of knowledge exchange and production.

The main aims of the Knowledge Exchange workshops are:

1. Capacity building

• We recognise that there is a lot of research being done around disability and many organisations are interested in disability inclusion as part of their EDI work. The workshops will support stakeholders in building capacity by pooling resources and expertise from across organisations. 

2. Knowledge sharing 

• Disabled people’s knowledge of disability and health remain under-utilised and under-valued. The workshops aim to change this by placing disabled knowledge and inclusive knowledge production at the forefront.

3. Relationship building

• We believe that relationships of trust are key to sustainable change and long-term positive impact. The workshops will support networking and foster connections across different organisations that can potentially lead to future partnerships and funding opportunities.

The Knowledge Exchange workshops will offer a space for extended discussions with stakeholders about centring disability and disabled people in EDI and research. 

Each workshop will focus on a specific theme relating to disability and feature short presentations from speakers. We will engage Disabled People’s Organisations, universities, researchers, charities/third sector organisations, health organisations, policymakers and funders.  We will also invite equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) teams from universities and organisations to share their stories and learnings. We will capture the discussions and ideas generated from the workshops through reflection blogs.

Workshops Themes

Current provisional themes for the workshops include:

• Cripping knowledge exchange
• Inclusive research culture and workplace environment
• Intersectionality: Disabled women in academia and research
• Barriers to research: Admin and bureaucracy
• Open research and open data
• Researcher development
• Policy, advocacy, and practice
• Co-production and collaborative research

1. Cripping Knowledge Exchange, 26th March 2026

How has your engagement with creative inclusive methods transformed your research and practice?”

Some of the questions we will consider are:

• How can creative methods make knowledge exchange more accessible to disabled people?
• What are the barriers to using inclusive creative methods in research and knowledge exchange?
• How do we create a system that supports inclusive knowledge exchange and crip creativity?

Dr Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril is a Research Associate on the Wellcome-funded Anti-ableist Research Culture iHuman project at University of Sheffield.  Élaina is a disabled philosopher of disability. Her work is anchored in relational feminist Spinozism and engages with disabled knowledges and practices of disability justice. She is currently working on the topic of disability doulas in relation to long COVID and is also a scholarly podcaster working on developing a co-creative podcasting research method.

Dr Daniel P Jones is a crip-queer scholar of disability and creative practitioner working across a range of disciplines to develop a sustained framework for the interdisciplinary study of Tourette Syndrome. He is currently using DJing and creative movement practice to explore the relationships between rural vs urban affect and the tourettic body mind. 

Khairani Barokka is a writer, artist, and researcher from Jakarta, based in London. Okka’s work has been presented widely internationally, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis, environmental justice, and access as translation. She has a PhD by Practice in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, and did her post-doc at UAL. Among her honours, she has been a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, a Delfina Foundation Associate Artist, an Artforum Must-See, and Associate Artist at the UK’s National Centre for Writing. In 2023, Okka was shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Awards in the Arts and Culture Category. Her books include Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, as co-editor), Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize, and 2024’s amuk (Nine Arches), longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. 2025's Annah, Infinite (Tilted Axis) is her creative nonfiction debut, and her most recent exhibition was 2025's 'Kerokan Pol' at Grand Union.

Cripping Knowledge Exchange recording

Cripping Knowledge Exchange: Disability, Creativity, and the Politics of Knowing by Turana Abdullayeva

2. Inclusive Research Cultures and Workplace Environments, 30th April 2026

How does disability transform research cultures and workplace environments?

Some of the questions we will consider are:

• How do we support the recruitment of disabled researchers and research support staff in the face of systemic barriers?
• What anti-ableist practices can we implement in the workplace to advance the career development of disabled researchers and non-academic staff?

Dr Armineh Soorenian is currently a Research Associate with iHuman and the School of Education at the University of Sheffield. She is working on the Environment strand of Wellcome Anti-ableist Research Culture project funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Armineh’s research focus has been in the fields of Disability Studies and Education, starting with her PhD at University of Leeds, Centre for Disability Studies, which investigated the inclusivity of British universities for Disabled international students and the accessibility of internationalisation of higher education. Her other research interests include Disabled academics, Disabled women, intersectionality, disability arts and representations, disability hate crime, and inclusive research methods.

Armineh has worked in DPO as well as public sector, where she has researched, commissioned and managed specific policy projects based on Disabled people’s lived experiences in the UK in areas such as Cost of Living, Employment, Social Care and Support, and Public Perceptions and Attitudes towards Disabled people, gathering qualitative and quantitative evidence to inform and influence policy.

Dr Sophie Phillips: I am a Research Associate with iHuman at the University of Sheffield. I am working on the Wellcome Trust Anti Ableist Research Culture Project, where we are employing inclusive methods to investigate how the university can become anti-ableist. I am specifically exploring how we can promote more inclusive disability research at the University of Sheffield. This is through an Open Call to all researchers in TUOS seeking to support research projects that put into practice inclusive methods with disabled people and their representative organisations. Also, we are cripping the university research concordat to ensure accessibility.

Dr. Hadar Elraz’s research focuses on marginalisation within the workplace, with a primary emphasis on mental health conditions (MHCs) and the interplay between intersectionality and ableism in high-performing organizations. Moving beyond traditional occupational health perspectives, her scholarship utilizes critical management studies and discourse theory to examine the lived experiences of employees with marginalised identities. 

A significant portion of her work explores how marginalised identities are constructed and how employees cope in the face of neoliberal workplace expectations. More recently she began investigating the intersections of gender and mental health, analyzing how ableist cultures affect equal participation, particularly in times of austerity. Her research effectively translates theoretical insights into practical applications, such as open-access tools for managing mental health at work. Ultimately, Elraz aims to challenge simplistic assumptions regarding diversity and inclusion while advancing practical and theoretical knowledge in Critical HRM and beyond.

Claire Graf is an interdisciplinary researcher specialising in human factors, safety, and policy implementation. With a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh, they focus on the “implementation gap” — where policies fail in practice — using tools from aviation human factors, root cause analysis, and systems design. They bring experience in governance, health and safety, and organisational systems through work as a trade union caseworker and Research Fellow, alongside qualifications in employment law and occupational H&S. Their work centres on disability, communication, and neurodiversity as systems challenges. Claire also draws on cave rescue and paramedic experience to ground their work in real-world, high-risk environments.