Events
Our events are held online, face-to-face, as workshops, seminars and conferences.
Watch recordings of our previous iHuman seminars
iHuman Events 2023
Disruptive conversations about what it means to be human
December 2023
Disability Matters launched and Online symposia details
September 2023 brings the launch of a new six year programme of research funded by a Wellcome Trust Discretionary Award
Disability Matters aims to transform health research and environments through a paradigm shift to disability as the driving subject of inquiry.
I am so excited to launch Disability Matters. This is an ambitious programme of work that hopes to develop anti-ableist and anti-disablist approaches to scholarship; broaden health research priorities, innovate research methodologies, promote inclusive research environments, encourage more positive disability representations and build a new generation of disabled and disability-focused health researchers. Our programme of work will generate transformative equity, diversity and inclusion knowledge; thus supporting Wellcome’s strategy to lead the science and health sector in challenging ableism and disablism in the practices and cultures of health research. Most importantly the work foregrounds the contributions of disabled researchers and disabled people's organisations as they lead new ways of thinking about disability, health, research and science.
Dan Goodley, Lead Investigator
You can find subtitled films from our co-investigators on our Twitter/X @Dismatters and our Instagram disability_matters and the project website gives more information
Announcement from the team:
As part of the first phase of work, join us in December 2023 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
Papers available here at this hyperlink https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ihuman/disability-matters/disability-matters-scholarship-collection
Overview of speakers
Mon 4 Dec 2023 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM GMT, Online, Zoom
Barbara Gibson
Barbara Gibson (PhD, BMR[PT]) 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.
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.
Janice McLaughlin
Janice’s work explores how childhood disability or illness is framed from within the worlds of medicine, community and family. The work has developed through partnership with disabled children and their families, organisations that advocate with them and other researchers. We examine the intersections of inequality, citizenship, identity, embodiment and care.
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.
iHuman Critical Disability Studies Seminar
12 - 2, 6th December 2023
HYBRID EVENT
Face-to-face: Workroom 2 (The Wave)
Online: ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
To be announced
LINK TO THE FULL TEXTS HERE
12 - 12.05
Introductions
Dan Goodley
12.05 - 12.20
Kirsty Liddiard (University of Sheffield) Cripping Breath: Towards a new cultural politics of respiration
Cripping Breath: Towards a new cultural politics of respiration is a new 5 year interdisciplinary programme of research funded by a Wellcome Trust Discovery Award. In this short talk we introduce the project: its origins, aims, methods and disability politics. The project begins from the premise that Covid-19 emphasises the need for urgent new analyses of the politics, processes and prioritisation of respiration and ventilation. The sudden emergence of global respiratory disease has reshaped our social, cultural, and political worlds and embodied experiences of health and illness. Importantly, the project centres the lives of people who have had their lives saved and sustained by ventilatory medical technologies. Respiratory failure is common in many health conditions, and is a symptom of Coronavirus. Our explorations, led by disabled, chronically ill and ventilated people, do so in recognition that these growing communities of people and patients are often absent from contemporary social theorisations of respiration and ventilation, but also that their experiences have much to teach about living in cultures of compromised respiration. Centring arts-informed, archival, narrative and ethnographic approaches, our project develops Crip perspectives - forms of knowledge production that emerge from lived experiences of disability and chronic illness. Artists-in-Residence, experts-by-experience, disability and arts organisations and clinicians will work in collaboration to curate and co-produce new understandings of the experiences of ventilated people, across a host of identity positions, to interrogate the new cultural politics of respiration and ventilation in a continuing global pandemic, and as we imagine post-pandemic futures.
- To follow Cripping Breath on X (formally Twitter): @CrippingBreath
- Please see the Cripping Breath website to learn more - click here
12.25 - 12.40
Ellie Cole (UCL)
People with disabilities in Liberia: a legacy of structural violence?
In this presentation I will discuss some initial reflections from my recent PhD fieldwork in Liberia. Liberia is a small low-income country on the West coast of Africa. It is a unique country as it was ‘settled’ in 1820 with (predominantly) freed enslaved people from the USA, and became Africa’s first republic following its independence in 1847. Liberia’s short history has been wracked with troubles. Enduring the lasting impact of colonialism, predatory capitalism and the slave trade, Liberia and its citizens have been ‘shaped and scarred’ by its history. In the last four decades, Liberia has experienced two brutal civil wars, the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic.
People with disabilities in Liberia continue to face severe stigma and discrimination, deeply entrenched poverty, and exclusion. Drawing on the 30 life-history interviews I conducted with people with disabilities whilst I was in Liberia, and taking what anthropologist Paul Farmer calls a ‘geographically broad and historically deep’ lens, this presentation will discuss how structural violence stemming from Liberia’s settlement and the interference of international actors impacts the contemporary lives of people with disabilities.
12.45 - 1.00
Dr Suzanne Glover (Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance). Transition to adulthood for young people with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. “More than Muscle and Movement.”
Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance, hereafter referred to as Pathfinders, is a user-led organisation run by and for people with muscle-weakening conditions. The organisation aims to provide support to its members whilst also undertaking campaign work and research on issues important to the muscle-weakening community. This presentation will be delivered by Pathfinders’ Research Officer, Dr Suzanne Glover. Suzanne, who has a neuromuscular condition, led a small group of researchers with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) to undertake a co-produced research study on Becoming an Adult with DMD. The work has been supported by a wider group of academics with expertise in the intersection of disability, social care and research.
Pathfinders understands that for people with DMD, entering adulthood can have a multifaceted impact on their lives. DMD causes progressive muscle weakness as individuals grow older which results in increasing care requirements. Developments in treatments such as steroid medications, ventilation and cardiac care have made positive steps in managing some aspects of living with DMD in adulthood. Nevertheless, our research indicates that so much of our social world and the existing systems designed to support disabled adults is inadequate for these individuals. Through co-production, this Pathfinders’ research uncovers a greater depth of understanding of adulthood in this population. It intimately explores how lives of these young adults are often over medicalised, mitigating important parts of identity and autonomy.
· https://www.pathfindersalliance.org.uk/
1.05 - 1.20
Gareth Thomas (Cardiff University) Critical disability studies and Erving Goffman: the (im?)possibilities for convergence
Erving Goffman’s scholarship has been subject to intense scrutiny within disability studies, with some highly critical of his approach and others reflecting on his ideas with more sympathy and appreciation. In this talk, I consider the (im)possibilities for convergence between Goffman’s work and critical disability studies (CDS). Drawing on an ethnography of a UK-based café run by/with people with learning disabilities, I use Goffman’s (1967) concepts of ‘deference’ and ‘demeanour’ to capture how interactions in this space are organised and imbued with acts of dis/respect. Using Goffman’s ideas in conjunction with concepts (e.g. ‘crip time’) and sentiments from CDS, I show how mundane moments – from drink-making, to order-taking, to serving purchased items – are carefully accomplished in ways that respect ‘territories of the self’ (Goffman 1971). Equally, I capture how the conduct of customers, on occasion, aligned with a tragic and deficit framing of (learning) disability, with members of the team (often implicitly) ignored, disregarded, or figured as charitable subjects. Ten years on from a plenary at the Society for Disability Studies Conference, where panellists debated whether disability scholars should continue to make use of Goffman’s work (Brune and Garland-Thomson 2014), I conclude by highlighting both the value and limitations of Goffman’s analysis.
1.20 - 1.40
Questions and discussion
Dan Goodley
Bios
Dr Kirsty Liddiard is currently a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield and a theme co-leader in iHuman. She is the author of The Intimate Lives of Disabled People (2018, Routledge) and the co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies (2018, Palgrave) with Tillie Curran and Katherine Runswick-Cole. She is also co-editor of Being Human in Covid-19 (in press, Bristol University Press) with Warren Pearce, Paul Martin and Stevie de Saille. She tweets at @kirstyliddiard1
Dr Suzanne Glover is the Research Officer at Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance. Joining Pathfinders towards the end of her PhD, Suzanne contributes to various research projects through connecting University researchers with young adults with neuromuscular conditions to co-produce research. Suzanne is currently leading Pathfinders’ project on Transition to Adulthood for those with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Suzanne has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Type II and uses non-invasive ventilation when needed. She lives in an apartment with her husband, Colin, along with their gracious Greyhound, Lady Edith. Suzanne has a 24-hour care package to support her needs and independence. Their home is also equipped with environmental controls using Amazon's Alexa. Suzanne enjoys going out for walks and loves dogs almost as much she loves a good strong cup of tea!
Gareth Thomas is a Reader in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. He is a sociologist with interests in disability, medicine, health and illness, reproduction, and technology.
Ellie Cole (she/her) is a PhD researcher at University College London. She has worked in disability-inclusive international development research for more than a decade on research projects across Africa and Asia. Her research interests include the intersectional experience of disability and poverty, health equity, and disability-inclusive climate resilience.
October 2023 (and running into 2024)
STeMiS/SHARC seminar series: Animal Studies meets STS
A new seminar series, running across the 2023/24 academic year, is being co-hosted by the Science, Technology, and Medicine in Society (STeMiS) and the Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre (SHARC). Over the course of the year we'll be hearing from scholars working at the intersection of animal studies and science & technology studies. The first of these talks is being held this month. Eben Kirksey (who authored the paper widely seen as consolidating the now omnipresent field of multispecies ethnography) will be speaking on 'Chemopower in Multispecies Worlds' on Monday 23rd October 4pm-5pm. Eben's talk will draw together previous research on frogs, pathogenic fungi and pregnancy tests, with newer theoretical work on industrial chemistry. Those on the STeMiS mailing list will receive a separate diary invite - if you'd like to be added to the mailing list please let me know.
Eben will be presenting online (link here), but a room is booked in the Diamond (315, meeting room 1) for those in Sheffield able to meet as a group. Other exciting speakers include Charlotte Wrigley, Selen Eren, Jon Henrik Remme, Yamini Narayanan, and Alex Blanchette.
Joining links for all other talks in the series can be found here: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ihuman/our-work/biosocial-humans/sharc-and-stemis-seminar-series
November 2023
iHuman at the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences
ESRC Festival of Social Sciences event: Animating Inclusion - Friday 17th November 2023, 15.30-17.30, Theatre Deli, Sheffield
Filmmakers use sound to build suspense for their audiences, but are Deaf people getting an equal experience to hearing people when they watch a film? Consider this and other questions about how film and TV can be made more accessible for Deaf people at the launch of the new animated short film, “Animating Inclusion".
The film explores how well sound is translated into the captions Deaf audiences read when they watch a film. You will have the opportunity to meet the researchers and producers who created this animation.
This is a BSL interpreted event. Registered BSL interpreters, Kat Pearson and Tom Pearson, will be present during the event.
The film will be available to watch on the Player after the event. Led by Dr Ryan Bramley and Dr Kirsty Liddiard, University of Sheffield
To book tickets and form more information please see here.
iHuman at the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences
Being Autistic and Considering Diagnostic Assessment
details of your event: Council Room, Firth Hall, Saturday 11th November, 12-1pm
Join Sarah Chierico, Helen Jones, Nyssa Koring and Dr Harriet Cameron at this film screening and panel discussion in Firth Court looking at adults’ experiences of autism diagnosis. Informed by interviews and focus groups from the team's research project, this animated film talks about diagnosis as something to celebrate but also as a bittersweet experience, reflecting on the difficulties in accessing assessment and existing in a world 'not built for you'.
Led by Dr Harriet Cameron, University of Sheffield and Dr Luke Beardon, Sheffield Hallam University (funded by The British Academy and The Leverhulme Trust).
contact / registration: via Eventbrite: https://player.sheffield.ac.uk/events/being-autistic-and-considering-diagnostic-assessment https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/being-autistic-and-considering-diagnostic-assessment-tickets-719723732057?aff=oddtdtcreator
December 2023
Disability Matters launched and Online symposia details
September 2023 brings the launch of a new six year programme of research funded by a Wellcome Trust Discretionary Award
Disability Matters aims to transform health research and environments through a paradigm shift to disability as the driving subject of inquiry.
I am so excited to launch Disability Matters. This is an ambitious programme of work that hopes to develop anti-ableist and anti-disablist approaches to scholarship; broaden health research priorities, innovate research methodologies, promote inclusive research environments, encourage more positive disability representations and build a new generation of disabled and disability-focused health researchers. Our programme of work will generate transformative equity, diversity and inclusion knowledge; thus supporting Wellcome’s strategy to lead the science and health sector in challenging ableism and disablism in the practices and cultures of health research. Most importantly the work foregrounds the contributions of disabled researchers and disabled people's organisations as they lead new ways of thinking about disability, health, research and science.
Dan Goodley, Lead Investigator
You can find subtitled films from our co-investigators on our Twitter/X @Dismatters and our Instagram disability_matters and the project website gives more information
Announcement from the team:
As part of the first phase of work, join us in December 2023 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
Papers available here at this hyperlink https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ihuman/disability-matters/disability-matters-scholarship-collection
Overview of speakers
Mon 4 Dec 2023 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM GMT, Online, Zoom
Barbara Gibson
Barbara Gibson (PhD, BMR[PT]) 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.
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.
Janice McLaughlin
Janice’s work explores how childhood disability or illness is framed from within the worlds of medicine, community and family. The work has developed through partnership with disabled children and their families, organisations that advocate with them and other researchers. We examine the intersections of inequality, citizenship, identity, embodiment and care.
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.
iHuman Critical Disability Studies Seminar
12 - 2, 6th December 2023
HYBRID EVENT
Face-to-face: Workroom 2 (The Wave)
Online: ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/93681952130?pwd=WDl2RjVCRUpzZlU4VjEvSkFXVThMUT09
Meeting ID: 936 8195 2130
Passcode: 42968
12 - 12.05
Introductions
Dan Goodley
12.05 - 12.20
Kirsty Liddiard (University of Sheffield) Cripping Breath: Towards a new cultural politics of respiration
Cripping Breath: Towards a new cultural politics of respiration is a new 5 year interdisciplinary programme of research funded by a Wellcome Trust Discovery Award. In this short talk we introduce the project: its origins, aims, methods and disability politics. The project begins from the premise that Covid-19 emphasises the need for urgent new analyses of the politics, processes and prioritisation of respiration and ventilation. The sudden emergence of global respiratory disease has reshaped our social, cultural, and political worlds and embodied experiences of health and illness. Importantly, the project centres the lives of people who have had their lives saved and sustained by ventilatory medical technologies. Respiratory failure is common in many health conditions, and is a symptom of Coronavirus. Our explorations, led by disabled, chronically ill and ventilated people, do so in recognition that these growing communities of people and patients are often absent from contemporary social theorisations of respiration and ventilation, but also that their experiences have much to teach about living in cultures of compromised respiration. Centring arts-informed, archival, narrative and ethnographic approaches, our project develops Crip perspectives - forms of knowledge production that emerge from lived experiences of disability and chronic illness. Artists-in-Residence, experts-by-experience, disability and arts organisations and clinicians will work in collaboration to curate and co-produce new understandings of the experiences of ventilated people, across a host of identity positions, to interrogate the new cultural politics of respiration and ventilation in a continuing global pandemic, and as we imagine post-pandemic futures.
- To follow Cripping Breath on X (formally Twitter): @CrippingBreath
- Please see the Cripping Breath website to learn more - click here
12.25 - 12.40
Ellie Cole (UCL)
People with disabilities in Liberia: a legacy of structural violence?
In this presentation I will discuss some initial reflections from my recent PhD fieldwork in Liberia. Liberia is a small low-income country on the West coast of Africa. It is a unique country as it was ‘settled’ in 1820 with (predominantly) freed enslaved people from the USA, and became Africa’s first republic following its independence in 1847. Liberia’s short history has been wracked with troubles. Enduring the lasting impact of colonialism, predatory capitalism and the slave trade, Liberia and its citizens have been ‘shaped and scarred’ by its history. In the last four decades, Liberia has experienced two brutal civil wars, the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic.
People with disabilities in Liberia continue to face severe stigma and discrimination, deeply entrenched poverty, and exclusion. Drawing on the 30 life-history interviews I conducted with people with disabilities whilst I was in Liberia, and taking what anthropologist Paul Farmer calls a ‘geographically broad and historically deep’ lens, this presentation will discuss how structural violence stemming from Liberia’s settlement and the interference of international actors impacts the contemporary lives of people with disabilities.
12.45 - 1.00
Dr Suzanne Glover (Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance). Transition to adulthood for young people with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. “More than Muscle and Movement.”
Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance, hereafter referred to as Pathfinders, is a user-led organisation run by and for people with muscle-weakening conditions. The organisation aims to provide support to its members whilst also undertaking campaign work and research on issues important to the muscle-weakening community. This presentation will be delivered by Pathfinders’ Research Officer, Dr Suzanne Glover. Suzanne, who has a neuromuscular condition, led a small group of researchers with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) to undertake a co-produced research study on Becoming an Adult with DMD. The work has been supported by a wider group of academics with expertise in the intersection of disability, social care and research.
Pathfinders understands that for people with DMD, entering adulthood can have a multifaceted impact on their lives. DMD causes progressive muscle weakness as individuals grow older which results in increasing care requirements. Developments in treatments such as steroid medications, ventilation and cardiac care have made positive steps in managing some aspects of living with DMD in adulthood. Nevertheless, our research indicates that so much of our social world and the existing systems designed to support disabled adults is inadequate for these individuals. Through co-production, this Pathfinders’ research uncovers a greater depth of understanding of adulthood in this population. It intimately explores how lives of these young adults are often over medicalised, mitigating important parts of identity and autonomy.
· https://www.pathfindersalliance.org.uk/
1.05 - 1.20
Gareth Thomas (Cardiff University) Critical disability studies and Erving Goffman: the (im?)possibilities for convergence
Erving Goffman’s scholarship has been subject to intense scrutiny within disability studies, with some highly critical of his approach and others reflecting on his ideas with more sympathy and appreciation. In this talk, I consider the (im)possibilities for convergence between Goffman’s work and critical disability studies (CDS). Drawing on an ethnography of a UK-based café run by/with people with learning disabilities, I use Goffman’s (1967) concepts of ‘deference’ and ‘demeanour’ to capture how interactions in this space are organised and imbued with acts of dis/respect. Using Goffman’s ideas in conjunction with concepts (e.g. ‘crip time’) and sentiments from CDS, I show how mundane moments – from drink-making, to order-taking, to serving purchased items – are carefully accomplished in ways that respect ‘territories of the self’ (Goffman 1971). Equally, I capture how the conduct of customers, on occasion, aligned with a tragic and deficit framing of (learning) disability, with members of the team (often implicitly) ignored, disregarded, or figured as charitable subjects. Ten years on from a plenary at the Society for Disability Studies Conference, where panellists debated whether disability scholars should continue to make use of Goffman’s work (Brune and Garland-Thomson 2014), I conclude by highlighting both the value and limitations of Goffman’s analysis.
1.20 - 1.40
Questions and discussion
Dan Goodley
Bios
Dr Kirsty Liddiard is currently a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield and a theme co-leader in iHuman. She is the author of The Intimate Lives of Disabled People (2018, Routledge) and the co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies (2018, Palgrave) with Tillie Curran and Katherine Runswick-Cole. She is also co-editor of Being Human in Covid-19 (in press, Bristol University Press) with Warren Pearce, Paul Martin and Stevie de Saille. She tweets at @kirstyliddiard1
Dr Suzanne Glover is the Research Officer at Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance. Joining Pathfinders towards the end of her PhD, Suzanne contributes to various research projects through connecting University researchers with young adults with neuromuscular conditions to co-produce research. Suzanne is currently leading Pathfinders’ project on Transition to Adulthood for those with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Suzanne has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Type II and uses non-invasive ventilation when needed. She lives in an apartment with her husband, Colin, along with their gracious Greyhound, Lady Edith. Suzanne has a 24-hour care package to support her needs and independence. Their home is also equipped with environmental controls using Amazon's Alexa. Suzanne enjoys going out for walks and loves dogs almost as much she loves a good strong cup of tea!
Gareth Thomas is a Reader in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. He is a sociologist with interests in disability, medicine, health and illness, reproduction, and technology.
Ellie Cole (she/her) is a PhD researcher at University College London. She has worked in disability-inclusive international development research for more than a decade on research projects across Africa and Asia. Her research interests include the intersectional experience of disability and poverty, health equity, and disability-inclusive climate resilience.
Previous events
1st November 2023, 15.00 - 16.30 GMT
Reflections from a Cyborg: Telepresence teaching in Higher Education
Sophie Savage, Associate Lecturer in Sociology, University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), with Dr Tillie Curran, Visiting Fellow, University of the West of England (UWE Bristol): Presenters will be presenting via telepresence robots
This presentation shares my experience of piloting the use of a telepresence robot as a reasonable adjustment for teaching in higher education during the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. I taught from home using the robot to facilitate interactive social science seminars. I will be focusing on realising the impact of meaningful inclusion, the development of relationships with students and colleagues within learning spaces and how a sense of self and value is challenged and defined in this context. I draw on post-human discourse adopting the viewpoint of the cyborg. Where technology is used as an extension of the self, the cyborg narrative challenges dominant discourses of technology that are framed as ‘assistive’. Therefore, centring my experience as a disabled person, is key in understanding ‘virtual embodiment’ and the impact upon my identity during a time which is hailed as ‘post-COVID’. We reflect on the institutional barriers encountered and propose strategies for wide-scale rollout of telepresence as a reasonable adjustment for all. I have dreamed of fleets of telepresence robots being available at all public spaces, and the cost of not supporting this cyborg dream is not a financial one but an ethical and human one. Investment in supporting disabled people’s right to work, and right to a full life can be a practical demonstration of ethical rigour and aligns with the shared missions of equality and diversity present across all higher education institutions.
Access details:
- This event will be hybrid - in person and online. PLEASE BOOK EITHER AN ONLINE OR AN IN-PERSON TICKET.
- The event consists of two speakers, followed by a question and answer (Q&A) session facilitated by the host. Online, you can use either your video and microphone and/or the chat box to engage in the Q&A.
- The event will begin at 15.00pm and finish at 16.30pm.
- There will be a comfort break between the keynote speaker and the Q&A.
- This event will be held in The Wave, Workroom 2, the new Social Sciences building on campus. This room is on the ground floor.
- The Wave has wheelchair access, good signage and lighting, accessible and gender neutral toilet access and lift access.
- Please note: this event has a MANDATORY mask policy - thus unless you have a clinical exemption or reason for NOT wearing a Covid-19 mask, you will be required to wear one.
- BSL interpretation - Anna Smith, Sheffield: https://signandword.com
- If you have any questions regarding accessibility, or there is anything we can do to make this event more accessible to you, please email Kirsty: k.liddiard@sheffield.ac.uk
In person tickets (30 max) available here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reflections-from-a-cyborg-telepresence-teaching-in-higher-education-f2f-tickets-722622833347?aff=oddtdtcreator
Online tickets available here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reflections-from-a-cyborg-telepresence-teaching-in-higher-education-vt-tickets-722633515297?aff=oddtdtcreator
JUNE 2023
Critical Disability Studies Seminar (in person)
Care as a possible foundation for scientific knowledge production: a feminist disability studies approach from Latin America
CONSTANZA ANGÉLICA LÓPEZ RADRIGÁN
Millennium Institute for Care Research MICARE
University of Valparaíso, Chile
11am - 1pm
28th June 2023
The Wave, Seminar room 1
University of Sheffield
Organised by iHuman and Identity and Marginalisation Cluster, School of Education
Abstract
The purpose of this presentation is to reflect on care as a possible foundation in scientific knowledge production proceses, from the experiences of researchers linked to feminist disability studies in Latin America. It is based on my Phd research, a qualitative study which aims to articulate a feminist approach to disability using a grounded theory constructivist inquiry strategy and interviews with thirty-six Latin American researchers, six European referenced researchers and nineteen Latin American activists. Along this journey three professors and I have written articles and this presentation will address its findings. First I’ll present how feminist disability studies are related to local and global feminist theories and practices. Then we’ll engage with researchers’ interactions and strategies aimed to build communities of care and counteract institutional logics of academic contexts that condition the ways of building knowledge and connecting with communities and activists. We’ll also briefly address how some academics position themselves in an area underpinned by the relevance of the life experience of disability. Finally, we’ll share some reflections on the link between knowledge production and the communities with which alliances are established and we’ll propose a model of thinking about care as an ethic aimed at reconfiguring the relationships between researchers and participants in scientific studies.
Biography
CONSTANZA ANGÉLICA LÓPEZ RADRIGÁN is a Phd candidate in Interdisciplinary Studies on Thought, Culture and Society at University of Valparaíso. ANID Fellow and postgraduate student at the Millennium Institute for Care Research MICARE and at the Millennium Nucleus on Disability and Citizenship DISCA. Member of the Critical Disability Studies Working Group of the Latin-American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO).
References
López Radrigán, C., Aparicio, A. & Tenorio, M. (sent) “El cuidado como fundamento posible para la producción de conocimiento”. Revista Estudos Feministas 31 (1).
López Radrigán, C. & Herrera, F. (sent) “‘Who am I to write this?': An approach to the field of feminist disability studies in Latin America”. In Chataika, T. and Goodley, D. (Eds.), Handbook of Postcolonial Disability Studies. Routledge.
Further references:
Alcoff, L. (1991). “The Problem of Speaking for Others”. Cultural Critique, Minnesota (20), pp. 5-32.
Butler, J. (2016). “Rethinking vulnerability and resistance”. In: Butler, J., Gambetti, Z. & Sabsay, L. (Eds.). Vulnerability in resistance (pp. 12-27). USA: Duke University Press.
Fardella, C., Broitman, C. & Matter, H. (2022). “Activismo, resistencia y subjetividad académica en la universidad neoliberal”. Izquierdas (51), pp. 1-16.
Fricker, M. (2017). Injusticia epistémica. Barcelona: Herder.
Guedes de Mello, A. (2016). “Deficiência, incapacidade e vulnerabilidade: do capacitismo ou a preeminência capacitista e biomédica do Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa da UFSC”. Ciência & Saúde Coletiva 21 (10), pp. 3265-3276.
Kittay, E. F. (1999). Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency. USA: Routledge.
Magnabosco, M. B. & Lemos de Souza, L. (2019). “Aproximações possíveis entre os estudos da deficiência e as teorias feministas e de gênero”. Revista Estudos Feministas 27 (2).
Maldonado, J. (2017). “Repensar la práctica del cuidado en el contexto del síndrome de Down”. Debate Feminista, México D. F., v. 53, p. 53-69
Martín, M. T. & Muñoz, J. M. (2014). “Epistemología, metodología y métodos. ¿Qué herramientas para qué feminismo? Reflexiones a partir del estudio del cuidado”. Quaderns de Psicologia 16 (1), pp. 35-44.
Reinharz, S. & Davidman, L. (1992). Feminist methods in social research. USA: Oxford University Press.
Pie Balaguer, A. (2019). La insurrección de la vulnerabilidad. Para una pedagogía de los cuidados y la resistencia. Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona.
Simplican, S. (2017). “Feminist Disability Studies as Methodology: Life-Writing and the Abled/Disabled Binary”. Feminist Review 115 (1), pp. 46-60.
Simpson, L. & Klein, N. (2017). “Danzar el mundo para traerlo a la Vida: conversación con Leanne Simpson de Idle”. Tabula Rasa (26), pp. 51-70.
Spivak, G. (1988). “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. In Nelson, C. & Grossberg, L. (Eds.). Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 271-313). USA: University of Illinois Press.
11th July 2023
18.00 - 19.30pm
iHuman Annual Critical Disability Studies Lecture
Dr Ben Whitburn, University of Southampton
(EDI)fying reforms in institutional accountability
Face-to-face
Seminar Room 1
The Wave
Whitham Rd, Sheffield S10 2AH
Google map
University of Southampton
b.j.whitburn@soton.ac.uk
Abstract:
Universities in the global north (UK and elsewhere) are awash with strategic accountabilities to increased recognition of diversity, evidence of inclusion, and equality of opportunity. Through equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives, actionable objectives are set by faculties aimed at strengthening inclusion for staff and students alike (Advance HE, 2020). While as disability researchers we might exult in the institutionalisation of liability in this way, addressing ableism in the pursuit of inclusive ways of being and knowing is no small undertaking. An appeal to, for instance, meaningless disability awareness training can be easily understood as a suitable response in the name of upholding equal human rights (Whitburn & Corcoran, 2021), while priority is given to chasing gold stars of recognition from an increasingly significant cadre of philanthropic organisations for the very clear and obvious benefits they can bestow. As much a personal reflection on my experiences with EDI activities as a recent arrival to the UK, and a theoretical discussion resourced with ideas about matters of concern (Latour, 2004) and relational ethics in the posthuman condition (Braidotti, 2021), in this paper I deliberate disability, difference and institutional inclusion. In doing so I want to draw our collective attention towards what and how prioritisation comes about, while considering by what means—and when we might know that—our efforts to confront ableism within institutions are achieved.
References
Advance Higher Education (HE). (2020). The importance of EDI in higher education. Accessed 19 november 2022 at https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/guidance/governance/governance-and-edi/importance-edi-higher-education
Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge (Vol. 2). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical inquiry, 30(2), 225-248.
Whitburn, B., & Corcoran, T. (2021). Diversity training, inclusive education and our inevitable lament. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 21, 17-24.
Register here on
IN PERSON: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/in-person-ihuman-critical-disability-studies-annual-lecture-2023-tickets-604659842867
ONLINE: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/online-ihuman-critical-disability-studies-annual-lecture-2023-tickets-618876154237
Hold the dates!!
11th July - 9 - 5: University of Sheffield / University of Toronto Disability Studies Symposium
12th July - 9 - 5: Promoting Anti-racist and Anti-disablist research cultures
Past events
May 2023 - Critical Disability Studies, iHuman/School of Education in Iceland!
Members of the Critical Disability Studies team will be reflecting on their research and scholarship at the Nordic Network for Disability Research Conference in Iceland this month.
A flyer introducing our work with links to project websites can be found here
26th April 2023
Challenges of Co-Production
Arts Tower
LT02
This event will be of interest to PGT, PGR and Academic colleagues in Education and Faculty interested in engaging with co-production.
1-1.30 Lunch and arrival
1.30 – 2.30 Workshop on Co-Pro run by Lauren White, Dan Goodley and the TAS project team from the University of York
2.30 – 2.45: Break
3 – 4: Keynote from Professor Van Hove
29th March 2023
9am - 1pm
Hybrid Event: Navigating Ethical Landscapes
Organised by the Identity and Marginalised Communities Research Cluster and iHuman.
This symposium will provide a space to find out more about different approaches to ethics e.g. NHS ethics, co-production and participatory ethics, decolonial ethics, dynamic ethics, affective ethics, and feminist ethics, and how these were applied in a range of research projects. You can attend the event either in person:
or online:
You can find the list of speakers and the titles of their presentations on the eventbrite links.
17th January 2022
17:00 – 19:00 GMT
Replication and reproduction: crises in science and in academic labour
Professor Felicity Callard, University of Glasgow
Venue - Lecture Theatre 2, The Diamond, 32 Leavygreave Road, Sheffield S3 7RD.
This is a hybrid event presented by iHuman and Metanet: please select a ticket for in-person OR remote attendance.
iHuman and Metanet are proud to welcome Professor Felicity Callard (University of Glasgow) to discuss the links between research culture and research quality, with a focus on the case of psychology's replication crisis. This event will be followed by a drinks reception.
Prof. Felicity Callard is Professor in Human Geography at the University of Glasgow and Editor-in-Chief of History of the Human Sciences.
"My presentation takes up the current preoccupation with ‘research culture’ to think about the relationship between epistemic cultures and labour relations. It does so by considering the specific example of the ‘replication crisis’ in psychology. Discussions of the replication crisis in psychology require, I argue, more substantive analysis of the crisis of academic labour and of social reproduction in the university, not least because both the replication crisis and the crisis of social reproduction in the university describe a failure in the processes of reproducing something. That the financial crisis of 2007–8 shortly preceded the emergence of the replication crisis, as well as exacerbated ongoing tendencies in the organisation and practices of university research (particularly the use of precarious contracts and the adjunctification of research), indicates the importance of addressing these two crises together. Many analyses of and responses to the replication crisis turn to research culture, often at the expense of adequate investigations of research labour. Today’s psychological sciences are made through multiple forms of labour: these include researchers, who range from senior principal investigators to sub-contracted, and exploited, research assistants working; research participants/subjects, who include those providing labour for experiments via exploitative platforms including Amazon’s Mechanical Turk; and workers providing heterogeneous technical and administrative labour. Through considering these multiple forms of labour, discussions of psychology, specifically, and of ‘research cultures’, more broadly, might better analyse the problems besetting them today, as well as develop different imaginaries for how to address them".
18th January 2023
13.30 - 14.30 GMT in person
Organised by Identity and Marginalisation Research Cluster, School of Education and iHuman
Associate Professor Dr Mónica Peña
Directora Magíster Psicología - Mención Psicología Social
Facultad de Psicología
Universidad Diego Portales
Chile
Schools as communities of care in neoliberal times: A decolonial analysis
9 Mappin Street, Seminar Room G14 (48)
https://www.accessable.co.uk/venues/9-mappin-street
In this seminar, Mónica will utitlise a decolonial perspective on care to critically explore how schools, that receive a state subsidy for educational inclusion work, work with children with disabilities in Chile. Mónica will primarily use Latin American authors in this analysis.
Contact d.goodley@sheffield.ac.uk to register for the event
2022
1st December 2022
15.30-17.00 GMT
In person Workshop
ICOSS conference room
Organised by Identity and Marginalisation Research Cluster, School of Education and iHuman
Workshop to respond to the Research for Social Care Call which now includes children and young people with introduction from the Research Design Service.This is a joint event to bring together researchers from the Health and Care Research Unit in ScHARR, the School of Education, iHuman, the Centre for Care and the Health Sciences School, to think about how we can respond to future calls from the National Institute for Health Research, Research for Social Care funding stream, which now include services for children and young people.
On the day: Come prepared to talk for 60 seconds about your research interests or a specific idea for the call, if you have one There will be no heckling or tricky questions! No need for any slides. In the interests of time we will be stopping everyone after 60 seconds so be mindful of time.
We'll allow plenty of time for discussion at the end
Register here:
2nd December 2022
10.00 - 15.00 GMT
Hybrid Writing Retreat for PGR students (Education and iHuman)
In person (PGR Room, 2nd Floor, Edgar Allen House) & online: https://meet.google.com/hwn-iiuf-wpw
Organised by Identity and Marginalisation Research Cluster, School of Education and iHuman
Hybrid writing retreats will be offered monthly for all doctoral students based on the School of Education (PhDs, EdDs and Ed.Psychs) and for iHuman PGR members. Besides providing a dedicated, structured time for writing, with writing being understood in broader terms here e.g. taking notes, annotations, section writing etc., these writing retreats aim to the establishment of communities of practice and to contribute to a sense of belonging.
The structure of the retreat is:
10.00am-10.20am Introductions and Setting Goals
10.20am-11.30am First Writing Session
11.30am-11.40am Short Break
11.40am-12.30pm Second Writing Session
12.30pm-1.30pm Lunch Break
1.30pm-2.40pm Third Writing Session
2.40pm-3.00pm Reflection Time
Contact: antonios.ktenidis@sheffield.ac.uk
15th December 2022
13.00-14:00 GMT
Elmfield Building, Room 109 and online (hybrid).
Capacity will be limited, so please register here for in-person or remote attendance
The Digital Society Network and iHuman are proud to present a research masterclass by Dr Aleesha Rodriguez (Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child),
Abstract
In this masterclass, Aleesha describes their methodology using digital methods to conduct a controversy analysis of Tesla’s (big) battery in Australia. Tesla’s (big) battery is an imagined and speculative technology that first materialised discursively on social media and later materialised into a physical battery known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve, in 2017. Tesla’s (big) battery became the “stuff of politics” in Australia (Braun & Whatmore, 2010) after a wager on Twitter between two billionaire tech entrepreneurs, namely Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the Australian co-CEO of Atlassian, Mike Cannon-Brookes. Tesla’s (big) battery was introduced on Twitter as, at the time, the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery that would “solve” an ongoing power crisis in the state of South Australia. The acute events experienced as part of South Australia’s power crisis were broadly considered highly controversial, as they engendered widespread media coverage and high-level accusations regarding the causes and resolutions of the crisis. However, these events also constituted a controversy in a more specific sense. Controversies in Science and Technology Studies (STS), are events that generate uncertainty, destabilise established practices and norms, and energise public deliberation wherein new relations and normative imaginaries form. To explore this controversy, Aleesha conducted a controversy analysis of Tesla’s (big) battery by mapping the key events, actors, and issues pertaining to this (big) battery, on two social media platforms, namely Twitter, the site of the (big) battery’s conception, and Whirlpool, an Australian technology forum in which users engaged in focused discussions about this (big) battery and longer-term debates about South Australia’s power crisis. In this masterclass, Aleesha will explain how they conducted a controversy analysis on Tesla’s (big) battery using digital methods and specifically, how they drew on actor-network theory (ANT)—both conceptually and empirically—to argue that Tesla’s (big) battery shaped energy futures both in Australia and globally.
Bio:
Dr. Aleesha Rodriguez is an experienced researcher in the fields of digital media communication and Science and Technology Studies (STS). They are a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, researching public imaginaries of future digital media technologies. Aleesha completed their PhD at the Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and their broad research agenda examines public communication on digital platforms, such as TikTok and Reddit, to explore the ways in which people and technology, mutually and dynamically, shape each other. Aleesha’s research has been published in the International Journal of Communication, Social Media + Society, and Media and Communication. The Literacies and Language Research Cluster at The University of Sheffield is delighted to be hosting Aleesha as a Visiting Scholar in Winter 2022.
9th November 2022
Open Forum
Making Disability Matters
10-2pn, Diamond Building
Patty Douglas, Brandon Martha Ward, Sure intern
Penny Fogg, SoE
Katherine Runswick-Cole, Soe
Sara Ryan, Chris Hatton, Sue Caton,MMU
Antonios Ktenidis, Kirsty Liddiard, Martina Smith TUOS
Making Disability Matter brings together researchers from across three institutions ot explore key theoretical and political questions facing disabled families.
2nd November 2022
STEMiS & iHuman Seminar
3-4.30, Elmfield
Reactivating Elements. Chemistry, Ecology, Practice
Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (1) & Dimitris Papadopoulous (2)
- Reader at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick
- Professor of Science, Technology and Society, University of Nottingham
Room 113, Elmfield Building.
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/rcn-tiwq-cgw
Elements oscillate between substance and semiosis, scientific and poetic, natural and manufactured, actual and ancient, indivisible and relational. Reactivating Elements draws the nonlinear historical significance of elemental thought—from chemistry, the biosciences, engineering and physics to social analysis, elementary theory, ecopoetics and cultural studies—into contemporary practice, while inviting new provocations about these ever present and simultaneously elusive phenomena. By drawing inspiration from a range of interconnecting discourses, in particular political ecology, environmental humanities, more-than-human geography, and media studies we explore multiple registers of the elements with tools provided within critical, cultural and feminist science and technology studies (STS). From this perspective, to call in the elements is to shape what comes to matter in technoscience: it is to shift attention to the techniques, processes, affects, and intensities that mix the soils, airs, waters, and fires up with organic and synthetic chemicals; and attend to their bodily potentials, relations, toxicities, and harms.
Masterclass
12:00-13:00, 2nd November.
Before giving their seminar, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa and Dimitris Papadopoulous have agreed to give a masterclass where there will be space to talk about their new book, recently published with Duke University Press.
This masterclass is intended to be a small group (10 max) who can talk about both the contents of the book (of relevance to those with an interest in Science and Technology Studies, social theory, ethnography, and I'm sure a few others besides) and also the publishing process. Dimitris and Maria have a lot to offer here, and we’re delighted to have this opportunity to chat with them. All are welcome to the masterclass, but it is also hoped that PhD Students and ECRs will attend. In order to book a spot or for any further information, please drop me a line: g.hollin@sheffield.ac.uk
17th June 2022
Marginalised humans seminar
Eve Haque, York University, Canada
Memorializing Aqsa Parvez: Public Feelings and Secular Multiculturalism
In late 2007, Aqsa Parvez, a 16 year old Canadian high school student in the suburban region of Mississauga of the Greater Toronto Area, was murdered by her brother Waqas and her father Mohammed. At a time when anti Muslim racism and Islamophobic violence continue at unprecendented levels domestically and internationally, ‘honour killings’ (as Aqsa’s murder was named in the media) remain proof of Muslim barbarity and therefore explanatory rationales for the demonization of entire groups of people and also serve as the limit case of tolerance in both the overtly Islamophobic as well as liberal discourses about Muslims and Islam in multicultural Canada. Interestingly, the demonization of Muslims and the integrative promise of Canadian white settler tolerance and benevolence come together approximately 120 kilometers south of Toronto in the rural town of Pelham (population 17,000) in the bucolic Niagara region of Ontario.
This paper will explore how multiculturalism and secularism were mobilized in a commemorative project to erect a memorial bench to Aqsa in the small southern Ontario town of Pelham located approximately 120 km from where Aqsa lived and died. In the pursuit and execution of this project, Aqsa as a young Muslim victim of an ‘honour killing’ was the limit case of white settler multiculturalism which prompted an outpouring of public feeling in the search for an appropriate memorial across a range of sites from domestic to international. I want to argue that as this commemorative project unfolded, gendered Islamophobia became entangled with secularized multiculturalism in a redemptive mission of integration to affirm white settler national feelings of tolerance and benevolence. I want to conclude with a few thoughts from my visit to the memorial site and the ethical challenge of writing about memorialization projects.
13 - 14th July 2022, University of Sheffield
Lauren White, Rowland Atkinson, Jamie Coates, Dan Goodley, Louise Kay and Kirsty Liddiard
The conference theme of ‘Harmful Societies’ gave rise to a diverse range of topics ranging from shrimps and social workers, to teachers and therapeutic chicken gardens. Twenty five early career academics from across the Faculty of Social Sciences gathered to showcase innovative and exciting research, promoting dialogue across disciplines as a means of generating new ideas and agendas about non-human and more-than-human perspectives. Many unexpected connections and alliances are forged today; not least around diverse forms of activism that emerge across planetary, human and spiritual locations (Braidotti, 2022). Through the creation of interdisciplinary spaces, researchers are pulled into unfamiliar conceptual and methodological spaces. As we try to connect with more familiar and trusted ideas, this creates tensions that require dialogue and resolution. These frictions constitute new and transdisciplinary theorisations. Transdisciplinarity is created when we come together and work as a community to create new concepts and languages. Conference speakers were invited to consider questions of theory as a way of helping us to understand wider causes of harm. We asked who is involved when we talk about harm and how forms of violence, victimisation or human/ecological damage are articulated. A key concern was not only to examine social questions and problems but to nest these issues within wider ecological dimensions that are interconnected with a range of other social harms and conditions. These issues were grouped into a series of thematic sessions: Education and Harm, Space, Place and Architectures of Harm, Social Care, Support and Questions of Harm, and Politics, Ideas and (Mis)information.
Education and Harm
In the first presentation Philip Draper argued that education causes harm to citizens through the construction of the educational attainment gap which further marginalises the already disadvantaged. He highlighted how this ‘stores up trouble’ for the future of individuals and exacerbates existing inequalities. Second, Charlotte Ashworth explored the relationships of trust within social work with a focus on the pandemic. In the final presentation, Hinna Abid illuminated the challenges faced by mature male students in Higher Education and how underlying and abstract forms of disadvantage may inflict harm at both a personal and societal level.
Space, Place and Architectures of Harm
Our second session covered some diverse territory. Rajwant Saghera discussed creating safe spaces for trans students in Colombian schools using Foucault’s insights on the idea of counter-spaces (heterotopia). This was followed by Glyn Robbins' analysis of the gains made and challenges of the housing movements in New York city, raising the question of how savvy organisation might be used to face down some of the harms generated by a lack of housing in other cities. Finally Rowland Atkinson discussed the relationship between cities and the production of systems of ideas that deny or justify the existence of inequalities using the example of the super-rich and their homes in London.
Social Care, Support and Questions of Harm
In this session, Ankita Mishra critically explored the lives and experiences of women in India, drawing attention to the exacerbation of violence that a global pandemic brings. In the second talk, Nick Burke examined the role of social work in promoting relationships and autonomy in post-adoption support. Demarcating the relationships between crisis, deprivation and child removal, Nick asked critical questions of closed adoption and its prevalence in England and Wales.
Politics, Ideas and (Mis)information
In the final panel, Louise Kay highlighted the complexities of ‘school readiness’ as a transitional concept and the reductionist nature of using the Good Level of Development (GLD) as a measure of ‘school readiness’ for young children. Richard Williams offered a philosophical contribution into the role of democratic regulation. Finally, Ahmed Alnuhayt presented the harms attributed by the misinformation of the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting questions into the role of communications and social networks when considering our health.
Two keynote speakers brought harm (and harmony) within and beyond humans to our attention. Dr Hannah Dickinson presented her keynote ‘Oceans of Harm, Oceans of Health’, which critically explored the meaning of one health, the use of shrimps as ‘hopeful’ biomaterials, and concluding by reminding us of our proximity, care and interconnectedness with the ocean and blue health. Dr Catherine Oliver followed our more-than-human call in her keynote ‘Harm and Harmony in the More-than-Human City’, highlighting community gardens, caring for chickens and the importance of these therapeutic landscapes in urban life. While Catherine reminded us that social harms were never far from reach in her ethnographic descriptions of the harms of housing in London, the spaces of community centred around, and caring for, chickens once again revitalised the care and connectedness of more-than-human societies. The final keynote was given by Professor Simon Pemberton who has contributed extensively to international debates about the ‘social harm perspective’, exemplified in his book, Harmful Societies (2017). Simon’s work considers the need for the Social Sciences to move away from ideas of serious violence and homicide as key measures of harm to include a range of other forms of violence and human damage, for instance social systems, capitalism, austerity, health and environmental harms. Our conference themes and collective conversation offered a timely reminder that within discussions of social harm(s) are points of hopefulness, activism, social change, interconnectedness and community. Our hope is that early career researchers leading these conversations and provocations of change, continue to critically explore and develop these academic and societal contributions in our more-than-human societies.
2021
8th July, 2021
Psychology Seminar
in collaboration with Critical Psychology and Education Cluster, School of Education
Chair: Professor Katherine Runswick-Cole
Online Link: https://eu.bbcollab.com/collab/ui/session/guest/9492e540e4ab4b4c8d6205e74879d4f2
Dr Meesha Warmington (Education)
The Nature of Executive Control Processes in Bilingual Children: Cross-Cultural Perspectives
Behavioural and neuropsychological indicators suggest that executive control is a broad construct, comprising a set of correlated but broadly separable processes involving attention, cognitive flexibility and working memory (including memory updating) (Miyake & Friedman, 2012). These models are typically modelled with English monolingual young adults, whose cognitive skills are at peak efficiency, living in Western countries. But more than half of the world’s population is bi/multilingual, raising the question as to why our approach to understanding the nature of executive processes relies on a population which is not representative of the global norm. The last few decades have witnessed interest in the cognitive profiles of bilinguals, with studies focused on monolingual-bilingual comparisons often demonstrating a bilingual advantage (Warmington et al., 2019; however, see Gathercole et al., 2014). Consequently, there remains little understanding regarding the extent to which cognitive skills are organised and interrelated in bi/multilinguals. In my previous work with bilingual adults I found that attention and inhibition correlated weakly, and that inhibitory processes were moderately related to working memory, while attention correlated weakly with working memory. These patterns imply some commonality and diversity across executive mechanisms. Although this has shed light on the nature and organisation of executive skills in bilinguals this was nevertheless done on a small scale. A vital concern is to replicate these patterns on a larger scale in bilingual children. This talk examines whether executive processes are organised differently in bilinguals and monolinguals.
Dr Tony Williams (Education) - What is psychology
In this talk I reflect on the question of what is psychology?
A way of thinking?
A way of talking?
A set of theories and frameworks through which to know oneself and others?
Where and when does our conversation with psychology begin?
From the starting point of Althusser's theory of interpellation and touching briefly on Winnicott, Lacan, Laplance and Fanon I wish to briefly explore from a broadly developmental perspective, the promise of psychology as a relationship and as a discourse that points in many directions.
14th June 2021
12-1.30pm
Masculinity, violence, and young people’s worlds
https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/7e8aca3eb7e448d38e2842af15f09365
Chair: Carolyn Leary
Overall description
The latest in the series of seminars co-organised by the iHuman research centre, the School of Education, and CRESST focuses on masculine and non-binary identities, violence, and young people’s worlds. It explores, from different theoretical and practice-based perspectives, how gender identities and conflict intersect - how expectations of gender give shape to conflict and ways of addressing it, and how conflict can emerge from different understandings of what gender is and how it plays out. The talks reflect research in a wide variety of contexts - including the UK, Canada, Fiji, Indonesia, and online games - with a common thread of how gender identities are understood from within, interpreted from outside, and, in consequence, how conflict might arise and be addressed. The session will be of interest to researchers and practitioners alike, and will include a substantial section for open discussion.
David Duriesmith (University of Sheffield, Department of Politics)
The pathologisation of youth masculinities: Social norm change after violence in Fiji and Aceh
Over the past six years there has been a growth of effort to shift men’s relationship with gender in sites of conflict. These initiatives aim to address a variety of issues including gender-based violence, violent extremism, conflict resolution and sexual health. Though these initiatives are diverse, they tend to focus on changing the attitudes, behaviours and identities of young marginalised men who are seen as being ‘at risk.’ At the same time, these initiatives often rely on older men as potential role models or advocates for change. This presentation will explore these trends from a critical masculinities framework, suggesting that programming has unwittingly pathologized youth masculinities at the same time framing older men as natural authorities. Reflecting on fieldwork in Fiji, Aceh and a set of international expert interviews, the presentation will suggest that existing social norm change programming risks stabilizing inequality rather than positive change.
Aneesh Barai (University of Sheffield, School of Education)
Non-Binary Representation and Avatars in Popular Game Franchises: Pokémon, Minecraft and Animal Crossing
Computer games typically offer limited options for self-representation for non-binary players. In some cases, avatars are pre-designed and unchangeable, and most games that do offer avatar customisation begin with a choice between a ‘male’ or ‘female’ base shape. Such binary options induce non-binary people who want to play into choosing against their own identity, a form of psychological violence that pushes them to self-efface. In this presentation, I will review the existing literature on gender and avatars to set out principles for effective gender inclusion in videogame design. I will then chart the history and analyse in detail the positive potential for non-binary gender expression in three major game franchises of recent years: Pokémon, Minecraft and Animal Crossing. The most recent Stonewall School Report (2017) indicated that 57% of non-binary schoolchildren experience bullying, and an alarming 9 in 10 non-binary pupils have considered suicide, an indication of the hostility of their environment to their very existence, exacerbated by wider social and political disavowal of non-binary lives. On May 22nd 2021, the UK Government firmly rejected a petition calling for legal recognition of non-binary identities, emphasising that there is “no provision” for people who do not identify within the binary. In this context, these games take a positive step in welcoming and including non-binary representation among their options, and opening up virtual spaces where non-binary people can create their own meaningful self-representations.
Tim Archer (University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education)
Engaging Young Men in and Through Peace Pedagogies
Violence is disproportionately perpetuated by men with claims that constructions of masculinity are a direct contributing factor. In contexts such as the UK and North America a variety of violence prevention and peace programmes therefore aim to prevent and transform these behaviours and ascribed forms of masculinity with different levels and audiences within society. A majority of such programmes often directly target young men through educational interventions. Evaluations of these interventions, however, show mixed results in effectiveness at engaging and changing the young men they aim to reach. My experiences as an educator similarly attested to how many young men appear disinterested in the programmes and pedagogies designed for them. As I explored why such programmes struggled to garner their engagement several key themes around language and attitudes emerged. This presentation aims to briefly introduce some of these themes and relate them to what it might mean for how we as educators engage and work with young men in capacities of peace and violence prevention.
Dr Katherine Easton (Education), Designing and developing digital mental health through co-production methods
Kat’s research interests lie in addressing health inequalities for vulnerable groups, particularly those with mental health needs, the elderly and individuals with long-term conditions, with a focus on the psychosocial barriers and benefits of innovative digital technologies. She specialises in facilitating and developing collaborations with industrial partners and research into the co-design, user testing, realistically evaluation and implementation of technology-supported health and social care services. In this short session Kat will present her research into the area of mental health and technology, using examples from the past decade to illustrate how essential it is to develop research ideas from the ground-up to ensure all stakeholders perspectives are included in digital mental health products and services and requirements for a generosity of engagement that these concerns provoke.
10th May 2021
12-1.00pm
Young people’s experience of online conflict
https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/f4d3745218ca46be929370bcb0fc3fc1
Chair: Tim Herrick
Overall description
This session brings together theorists and practitioners working with young people, in the area of conflict online. Through a mixture of data- and theory-led analysis of online conflict and a practice-based understanding of young people’s experiences, the seminar offers participants a range of ways of framing and responding to conflicts lived through by young people online, an exploration of what positive, supportive responses might look like, and how all of this might impact on the practices of organisations working with young people. There will also be opportunities for participants to share their own perspectives, experiences, and suggestions for alternative understandings.
Carolyn Leary (programme director, CRESST)
I will describe several projects with young people that illustrate their perspectives on conflict. At one secondary school, the young people emphasised that the fluidity of their online and offline lives means they didn’t identify conflict online as a separate challenge to their daily lives. At another, the young people identified misinterpretation as a key factor and suggested constructive ways for making comments clearer. This is captured in a booklet produced with the young people, ‘Antisocial media’, which has been used by the school to support all pupils. The overall concern of CRESST is how to equip young people with understanding about their online activity, and encourage their resilience to handle conflict well.
Josiah Lenton (Education)
This presents results from my MA research project, “Identifying and Navigating Conflict in Video-Games”. Discussions of video-games tend to centre on the topic of portrayals of violence - however, this overlooks a more nuanced discussion of ‘conflict’ in general. Using case-study data from the Children, Technology and Play project, I considered social interactions on the topic of video-games, identified examples of conflict scenarios that arose, and how these conflicts were resolved or managed by their participants. Further, I drew on actor-network theory to expand our understanding of ‘social actor’ in this context. This generated novel suggestions on how we might expand our understanding of ‘conflict’ in the context of video-games.
Claire Mead (Programme Manager, National Videogame Museum)
This talk will set out a practice-based view of conflict in videogames, exploring popular views on the ways conflict plays out by drawing upon past and present curatorial and learning projects from the National Videogame Museum. It will focus on Animal Crossing Diaries, the museum's ongoing collecting project relating to experiences of Animal Crossing: New Horizons related to the pandemic during the past year. The talk will aim to shape a broader understanding around the way games are played and experienced by a range of different players and how we can use these games to further challenge assumptions and encourage inclusive practices in museums and heritage.
Thursday 22nd April 2021
12-1pm.
Co-production/co-design
in collaboration with Critical Psychology and Education Cluster, School of Education
Chair: Dr Lauren Powell
Online link: https://eu.bbcollab.com/collab/ui/session/guest/7594c212f7014701bb564a6f8e6646d5
Dr Claire-Marie Whiting, Genuine Partnerships
Genuine Partnerships is a Rotherham-based team made up of practitioners, parent carers and young people modelling and promoting co-production. Each team member is considered equal, so the term professional is either not needed or applies to everybody. Based on narrative research with children with SEND and their families, the team co-created the Four Cornerstones (Rotherham Charter) and went on to co-design packages of support, training and tools to help schools, Education, Health and Care services, as well as whole areas, genuinely involve parent carers, children and young people in decision-making that affects them at all levels.
Dr Penny Fogg (Education), ‘Wrong way’
‘Wrong way’ is a short audio play which examines the complex interacting forces which operate in the territory of School Exclusion. The play was written, performed and produced by a group of young people who have experienced school exclusion. Technical and artistic advice was provided by a sound engineer and a theatre producer, organizational support and encouragement was provided by staff in Sheffield Inclusion Centre and myself, a University based researcher . The play, as you will hear, is an artistic production. and in this respect speaks for itself. However, within the story you will hear the voices of schools, teachers, parents and young people as they speak to the difficulties and dilemmas which confront them . As events unfold implications become clear. There is indeed a ‘Wrong Way’ to cope with disruption and disorganisation, emotional pain and loss, conflict and disappointment. Change is desperately needed in the systems around children and young people but the situation is complicated. As the play shows, everything connects, around us and within us, and a focus on individuals and what they could, or should do, does not take us very far towards understanding or helping.
Dr Lauren Powell (Education), The use of co-design to engage young people with ADHD in research
This talk will focus upon the inclusion of young people with ADHD in research generally and how co-design can be used to engage this population. There will then be a shift in focus to discuss how co-design can still be adopted to engage this population in research online during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Professor Cathy Nutbrown (Education), Co-producing family literacy work in prisons.
In this short presentation I will briefly outline a co-designed and co-produced project to develop family literacy work with imprisoned fathers. I will focus on how the work was co-produced with a prison support charity and the imprisoned fathers. I'll also talk about how this work led to high impact and embeddedness, across many UK prisons.
19th April 2021, 12-1pm
Knowing humans
Chair: Dr. Ros Williams
https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/dc78a05b82f443bebd0c94b1c0227c5c
1. August Lindemer (Sociological Studies/Grantham Institute)
"Planetary Health, Planetary Pathology: Climate Change and the Medical Professions”
The human health implications of a changing climate have concerned public health experts for more than thirty years. Over the last decade, these concerns have extended to the applied medical professions. For most of this process, the accompanying discourses were those of public, global, or human health. In recent years however, the discussion shifted to that of planetary health as, varyingly, a new principle, field, or discipline. Concerned with the planetary systems that sustain human health and the various so-called health co-benefits between the two, the engagements of medical professionals practiced under the banner of planetary health have extended well beyond the formal health sector. In this talk I will present some tentative thoughts on how we might think about the image of planetary health and its position in medical professional sensibilities.
2. Stefania Vicari (Sociological Studies) “Humans, Platforms and Genetic Risk”
With the recent roll out of whole genome sequencing and the increasing use of predictive genetic testing, a rising number of individuals are identified as ‘previvors’, namely as healthy individuals at risk of genetic diseases. Existing research shows that social media platforms help people live through illness, yet little is known about how they shape life choices in healthy individuals who are expecting to become patients and who plan their life around – or despite – this expectation. In my work I focus on cancer 'previvorship', or the condition of coping with a genetic predisposition to cancer prior to cancer occurrence. Bringing together an understanding of genetics with concepts from the sociology of health and illness and platform studies, I explore if, how and to what extent the architectures, vernaculars and (socio-economic) values of western social media platforms shape the way previvorship is lived, performed and understood.
3. Warren Pearce (iHuman/Sociological Studies) “Inequalities and the imagined public: cohesive and fractured assumptions within UK scientific advice”
By the start of 2021, the UK was in the midst of a disastrous second wave of deaths from Covid-19, and had the highest per capita death rate of any large country. Yet the UK had previously been identified as one of the countries best prepared for any future pandemic. This gap between preparedness and performance continues to demand explanation. We contribute to this effort by revealing the "imagined public” within the UK's scientific advice. This imagined public constitutes a key set of framing assumptions that help to make sense of the country's broader pandemic response. Our paper aims to make these assumptions explicit, and show how the imagined public went through cycles of cohesion and fracture in the fraught months of February-June 2020. Analysing official minutes and press briefings, we identify three characteristics of the imagined public: (1) a ‘freedom-loving’ public resistant to stringent policy interventions; (2) the public as part of a societal ‘machine’, subject to precision control from the centre in order to achieve policy goals; (3) a public that was, in an echo of wartime rhetoric, ‘all in it together’. We focus particularly on the tensions between a singular imagined public and the multiple health inequalities that became increasingly stark as the pandemic developed. We conclude by considering the implications of our analysis, both for understanding the UK’s response to Covid and for the future practice of scientific advice.
1st February 2021
12 – 13.30
Key concerns for Critical Disability Studies in Covid-19 times
Dan Goodley, Rebecca Lawthom, Kirsty Liddiard and Katherine Runswick-Cole (Education)
Please sign up to
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ihuman-online-seminar-2021-tickets-127463180805
Online link: https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/08ed71b946b4488aa0ebd82d19396ef4
This paper offers an inevitably partial take on some of the key concerns that we think scholars, activists and artists of disability CFR studies should be engaging with. Everything we do, these days, takes place in the shadows cast by the global pandemic. While it is important to acknowledge the centrality of Covid-19 - and the threat this poses to the mind-bodies,politics, and everyday realities of disabled people - we want to foreground some preoccupations, ideas and debates emerging from within the field of disability studies. We will begin the paper by offering a perspective on the contemporary nature and state of disability studies; suggesting that we are all critical disability studies thinkers now. Next, in order to narrow the focus of the discussion in this brief paper, we choose one emergent and popular theoretical orientation - posthuman disability studies. Then, we introduce and elaborate on four broad concerns that we think we should engage with; desire, alliances, non/humans and their implications for conceptualising social justice. Throughout the paper we will work through some of the power dynamics, questions of accountability
28th January 2021; 12 - 13.00
On Marginalisation
in collaboration with Critical Psychology and Education Cluster, School of Education
Chair: Harriet Cameron
Online link: https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/66a0b0dc140d4fc8b9543961ec958597
Dr Chris Winter (Education), Geography GCSE constructs the white world
Since the rise of the global Black Lives Matter movement, the accusation that systemic whiteness pervades the education system in England increased in prominence, with school History as a key target, whilst little attention is paid to school Geography. I investigate the legacy of school Geography’s white epistemology and its enactment today in two ‘multicultural’ schools. I inquire into discourses of whiteness and experiences of marginalisation resonating through the GCSE topic of ‘Global Development’. The study indicates three intersecting technologies at work: ‘Dividing the World’, ‘”Race”, Whiteness and Colour-blindness’ and ‘Performativity’.
Professor Rebecca Lawthom (Education), Community Psychology: the recognition of and working with marginalisation
For those people who find themselves at the edges or fringes, we need to find a psychology that connects and reaches out. Community psychology is one such space in which this connectivity is taken seriously. Using projects such as working with migrants or homelessness, I show how this thinking can work when we privilege the experiences of marginalised groups within the research.
Our work
How we understand being ‘human’ differs between disciplines and has changed radically over time. We are living in an age marked by rapid growth in knowledge about the human body and brain, and new technologies with the potential to change them.