In early May, I travelled to Helsinki to attend the Nordic Network on Disability Research (NNDR) conference titled “Disability in Local and Global Contexts”. I was joined by my colleagues Liz Dew (WAARC) and Lucy Dunning (Social Research Institutes).
The event started with a keynote by Margaret Price, who asked what it means to gather and especially to gather in accessible ways. This relates to her new work on The Gathering Project. I was struck by her exploration on how institutional policy attempts to define what gathering is and how it impacts on the ways in which we gather.
I was particularly interested in sessions on Disability and Labour Markets. Presentations from Hardonk, Ugreniov, Bulkeley and Jarus prompted questions such as, what does work look like for disabled people? What are the common barriers to employment for disabled people and how can we address these? This caused me to reflect on the current norms of working in relation to disability, and how disability can act as a catalyst for rethinking the nature of work enitirely.
I enjoyed the session by Hanne Bjertnæ who spoke of the difficulty students experience accessing accommodations within the Norwegian context. She explained that, although policy grants students the right to accomodations, these are determined by discretionary assessment which is often applied in an unequal and inconsistent way. This caused me to think about the gap between formal policy and the actual lived reality for disabled people, especially relating to accessibility in education or work.
Lastly, I attended “Navigating Challenges in Disability Rights Organisations” which outlined the impact of a changing membership, digitalisation and social media on disability rights organisations. It was interesting to reflect on how online platforms have been used to form community and to see how different research projects had worked with disability rights organisations.
As well as being an attendee, I also had the opportunity to experience the event as a speaker. I presented a paper titled Beyond the Desk: How Professional Services Staff Shape Inclusive Research Culture, which was a collaborative piece from myself, Lucy and Liz. We drew upon our personal experiences of inclusive practices in order to support disabled researchers, and through this we wanted to illustrate the positive impact of disability-focused strategies on research culture.
This was the first time we had presented our work on this and our audience was very receptive and positive, which confirmed to use that this was a conversation worth having. We had a question from our audience around the inclusion of technical staff within universities, which has certainly given us something to consider.
Altogether my experience at NNDR contributed to my learning on disability within education and work. I thought about how disability, for both staff and students, shows up in these spaces. I reflected on how we can work together with disabled people’s organisations and what are the best ways to do this. Ultimately, it was a fantastic opportunity to meet with the international disability studies community and gain a sense of the bigger questions being asked. This is knowledge that I can incorporate into my practice within Disability Matters.
The conference also provided an ideal example of a sensory room and this is certainly something I can take forward into future events.
I am very grateful that I was able to represent Disability Matters in Helsinki, and I want to thank my colleagues who made this possible. Thank you to NNDR and the University of Helsinki for your hospitality. I especially enjoyed being invited to Helsinki City Hall, which illustrated the significance of our gathering together.
If you would like to know more about the work I presented here, please find the following: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ihuman/events-2/professional-services-inclusive-research-cultures
More about me and my role here.
