Lecturer and Professor Positions Advertised at the University of Exeter (UK)

The University of Exeter (UK) are seeking applicants for a Lecturer in Inclusive Education and a Professor in Special Educational Needs and Inclusive Education- please click on the links for more information or visit the searchable ‘job’ site at www.exeter.ac.uk/jobs.

New issue of Review of Disability Studies (8:2) is now available

The new issue, Volume 8 Issue 2, of the Review of Disability Studies is now posted online at www.rds.hawaii.edu.

Articles include:

• Teacher Educators’ Varied Definitions of Learning Disabilities – Rachael Gabriel (University of Connecticut, USA) and Jessica Lester (Washington State University, USA)
• Parental Chronic Illness: Current Limitations and Considerations for Future Research  - J.W. (Bill) Anderson (Illinois State University, USA), Caitlin A. Huth (Eastern Illinois University, USA), Susan A. Garcia (Western Governors University, USA) and Jennifer Swezey (Advocate Lutheran Children’s Hospital, USA)
• Disability Studies and the Language of Mental Illness – Katie Aubrecht (University of Toronto, Canada)
• Education of Children with Disabilities as Constructed within a Russian Newspaper for Teachers – Maria Oreshkina (University of Scranton, USA), Jessica Lester (Washington State University, USA) and Sharon Judge (Old Dominion University, USA)
• Conceptualizing the “Dis” of Our Abilities: A Heuristic Phenomenology – Jamie Buffington-Adams (Indiana University, USA)

The new issue also includes Book and Media Reviews (of The Stress of Combat, the Combat of Stress: Changing Strategies towards Ex-Service Men and Women and Historicizing Fat in Anglo-American Culture) as well as Disability Studies Dissertation Abstracts.

Fourth Keynote Title and Abstract Announced for Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane: 3rd International Conference (Chester, UK: June 2012)

Last but certainly not least, we are pleased to announce the details of our fourth keynote for Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane: 3rd International Conference at the University of Chester (June 26th-27th 2012).

Cassie Ogden (University of Chester, UK) will be discussing….

Title: Gases, Liquids and Solids: Reclaiming Fluidity in a Liquid Modern World

Abstract: Much academic focus has led to the understanding of the commodification of the body, which has resulted amongst other things in the devotion of time, money and effort, to pursue the ‘perfect’ body.  This commitment to an idealised/normalised asceticism is often manifested in the actual or appeared alteration of the size and shape of the body with the ‘help’ of various diets, clothing, surgery, drugs and exercise. One’s corporeality therefore partially shapes social reality and statuses according to the degree to which bodies are accepted into society.  Despite the importance placed on the body in terms of appearance and productivity in the contemporary world, mundane functions of the body are often deemed shameful in this fallacious imaginary of the body resulting in the denial and/or veiling of regular bodily functions.  Repulsion and exclusion can be felt by those possessing ‘leaky’ bodies or more accurately bodies that leak without control. This paper utilises a Baumanesque analysis of modernity to highlight the convenience of a controlled body to a consumerist society.  Also reflective of Shildrick’s (2009) plea for troubling dominant discourses and instead envisaging all bodies as non-stable, Bauman’s work creates the potential to imagine an emancipated society where static, constricting notions of the body are obsolete. Through the location of society as liquid modern (Bauman, 2000), the common sense notion of ‘bodily control’ will be interrogated and highlighted as a dangerous benchmark that people are best to resist.

Our three other confirmed keynotes are:

• China Mills (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK) – for details click here   
• James Overboe (Wilfrid Lauier University, Canada) – for details click here
• Margrit Shildrick (Linkoping University, Sweden) – for details click here

For Further Details on the conference, including registration – please click here

REMINDER: DRF Seminar: Fri. 25th May 2012 (Sheffield, UK)

Date/Time: Fri. 25th May 2012 (Friday) 1.00pm – 2.30pm

Venue: Room 10212 in the Arundel Building, City Campus, Sheffield Hallam University (More information on the venue can be found here.) ***Please note the change to our usual room***

Join us for:

Everything about us without us: the struggle of disability activists for Independent Living in Iceland

Embla Ágústsdóttir, chairwoman of the independent living cooperative in Iceland (NPA miðstöðin), embla@npa.is

&

Freyja Haraldsdóttir, directress, of the independent living cooperative in Iceland (NPA miðstöðin), freyja@npa.is

Chair: Jenny Slater

Abstract: Iceland is one of the countries that lacks policy and practice for personal assistance and independent living for disabled people. A user-led cooperative on personal assistance was founded by 33 disabled citizens in Iceland in 2010, who have since been fighting for the recognition of personal assistance as a way in providing services.

The government decided in the beginning of 2011 to start a three-year pilot project following the transference of services for disabled people from the state to the municipalities. This pilot project has been delayed but is in its first stages and will be ongoing until the end of year 2014 when personal assistance is supposed to become a legal right.

In this presentation we want to shed some light on the struggle for independent living in Iceland. We want to share our experience on how this process has developed from the viewpoint of disability activists and how we have experienced the need to fight for our involvement and having a voice, even when it comes to working with disability organizations and the academia.

Is, after all, everything about us supposed to be without us?

Please feel free to circulate and hope to see you there!

CCDS Event: Foreign Bodies: Disability and Beauty in Toni Morrison’s Writing (June 2012, UK)

Event: Centre for Culture & Disability Studies (CCDS) Research Seminar 

Date: Weds. 27th June 2012: 3.15pm-4.45pm ~ Venue: Eden, 109, Liverpool Hope University, UK. 

Brief Description:

Foreign Bodies: Disability and Beauty in Toni Morrison’s Writing

~ Dr. Alice Hall (Université Paris-Diderot, France)

This paper examines the relationship between disability and beauty as a central preoccupation of Toni Morrison’s fictional writing, her critical discourse and her most recent work as a curator. I am interested in how Morrison’s critical writing about race and identity intersects with shifting notions of beauty in her fiction, but also, in turn, how these ideas can provide a conceptual framework for writing about literature and disability in general.

Dr Alice Hall holds an MPhil in Criticism and Culture and a PhD in twentieth century literature from the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. She recently completed a postdoctoral position at the Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Nottingham and is the author of Disability and Modern Fiction: Faulkner, Morrison, Coetzee and the Nobel Prize for Literature published by Palgrave Macmillan in November 2011. She currently teaches at Université Paris Diderot and is working on her second book. She has taught widely on twentieth and twenty-first century literature, including topics such as Modernism, the body, short stories and the novel.

For further information from the organisers, please contact: Dr. David Bolt: boltd@hope.ac.uk

Third Keynote Title and Abstract Announced for Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane: 3rd International Conference (Chester, UK: June 2012)

Proving that good things come in threes… we are pleased to announce the details of our third keynote for Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane: 3rd International Conference at the University of Chester (June 26th-27th 2012).

Margrit Shildrick (Professor of Gender and Knowledge Production, Linkoping University, Sweden) will be discussing….

Title: Celebrating Crip Pleasure: The Somatechnics of Disability and Desire

Abstract: In this presentation, I intend to address pleasure and desire in the disabled body in relation to somatechnics in which embodiment is always technologised. The focus will primarily be on sexuality, but also on other bodily engagements.

As one aspect of biotechnology, prostheses have long been in term use as compensatory technologies that stand in for some putative lack or deficiency that is supposedly the mark of anomalous embodiment. More recently, however, the emphasis has firmly switched to enhancement and supplement, and it is that more productive trajectory that I shall pursue. My argument is that in the era of postmodernity, the disabled body specifically can raise acute questions about the always ambivalent relationship between embodied subjects, pleasure and biotechnology. Desire is no longer focussed on the replication of a more or less acceptable model of normative practices but on a highly productive alternative that inevitably queers the meaning of sexuality itself.

For Further Details on the conference, including registration – please click here

Event: DRF ‘Encore’ Seminar: 25th May 2012 (Sheffield, UK)

The final DRF seminar of the 2011-12 academic year is scheduled for tomorrow (3rd May 2012)  and we are pleased to announce that there will be an encore.

Date/Time: Fri. 25th May 2012 (Friday) 1.00pm – 2.30pm

Venue: Room 10212 in the Arundel Building, City Campus, Sheffield Hallam University (More information on the venue can be found here.) Please note the change to our usual room.

Join us for:

Everything about us without us: the struggle of disability activists for Independent Living in Iceland

Embla Ágústsdóttir, chairwoman of the independent living cooperative in Iceland (NPA miðstöðin), embla@npa.is

&

Freyja Haraldsdóttir, directress, of the independent living cooperative in Iceland (NPA miðstöðin), freyja@npa.is

Iceland is one of the countries that lacks policy and practice for personal assistance and independent living for disabled people. A user-led cooperative on personal assistance was founded by 33 disabled citizens in Iceland in 2010, who have since been fighting for the recognition of personal assistance as a way in providing services.

The government decided in the beginning of 2011 to start a three-year pilot project following the transference of services for disabled people from the state to the municipalities. This pilot project has been delayed but is in its first stages and will be ongoing until the end of year 2014 when personal assistance is supposed to become a legal right.

In this presentation we want to shed some light on the struggle for independent living in Iceland. We want to share our experience on how this process has developed from the viewpoint of disability activists and how we have experienced the need to fight for our involvement and having a voice, even when it comes to working with disability organizations and the academia.

Is, after all, everything about us supposed to be without us?

Please feel free to circulate.

Further Details: Theorizing Normalcy and the Mundane 3rd International Conference (Chester, UK)

 Theorizing Normalcy and the Mundane 3rd International Conference

“Cripping the Norm” 

** Extended call for papers - new deadline: 15th May 2012 **

** Conference website for details and registration now online: click here **

Dates: 26th- 27th June 2012

Where: University of Chester

Keynotes confirmed:

• China Mills (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK) – for details click here   
• Cassie Ogden(University of Chester, UK)
• James Overboe (Wilfrid Lauier University, Canada) – for details click here
• Margrit Shildrick (Linkoping University, Sweden) – for details click here

A conference jointly-hosted by University of Chester in association with Critical Disability Studies (Manchester Metropolitan University) (MMU) and the Disability Research Forum (Sheffield Hallam University)

This 3rd international conference builds on the success of the Normalcy2010 and Normalcy2011 conferences held in Manchester and seeks, again, to bring together an international group of disability studies researchers. Our conference moves to the beautiful Cathedral town of Chester (located on the border of England and Wales)

This conference will critically explore and debate issues in the following areas:

- exploring the cultural and political production of normalcy
- addressing our obsession with reason and rationality
- connecting ableism with other hegemonies including heterosexism, racism and ageism
- analysing the barriers and possibilities of the mundane and extraordinary
- deconstructing new pathologies and ‘abnormalities’
- celebrating deviations from the norm
- affirming crip identities and ways of living

Our aim is for this conference to be as inclusive as possible.  We welcome activists, undergraduate and postgraduate students, practitioners and academics to join us. In the spirit of an eco-friendly conference, registered delegates will be sent an e-pack. Details of accommodation near the venue will also be sent to delegates.

This year, to cover costs of refreshment and lunches, we will be charging a flat rate of £75 per delegate. Free registration is still available however for full time students and the out of work.

For further information (or to request a code to allow free registration) please contact Dr Cassie Ogden: c.ogden@chester.ac.uk – tel (01244 512068)

When registering online please complete the form below before clicking on “add to cart”.

Reminder: Next DRF Seminar ~ 3rd May 2012 (Sheffield, UK)

DRF Seminar Series: Seminar #7

Date/Time: 3rd May 2012 (Thurs) 2pm-4pm

Venue: Room 10111 in the Arundel Building, City Campus, Sheffield Hallam University (More information on the venue can be found here.)

• Slot 13: Steven Graby (Centre for Disability Studies, University of Leeds): Autism and/as “disabled” identity 

Abstract: TBC

• Slot 14: Louis Nisiotis (Sheffield Hallam University): A Cyber Campus to Support Inclusive Education

Abstract: This study aims to review and explore the use of cyber campuses as a potential learning tool to support people who cannot regularly attend the University. Students whom due to various reasons have to be away from the University are missing important learning experiences and this research investigates the concept of cyber campuses as a support tool to overcome some of the barriers that restrict or exclude them from education. 

A virtual inclusive learning environment capable to support and enhance students learning experience has been developed. This presentation shall discuss the research method, the motivation behind this research and the expected contributions in knowledge. Also the work that has been done, the work that is intended to be carried out and the research challenges that are emerging during this investigation shall be presented.

***Coming Soon*** We will be shortly announcing dates for 2012-13 so watch this space if you would like to present a paper in an upcoming seminar. 

 

Getting Involved in the DRF…

The Disability Research Forum (DRF) will soon be entering its seventh year and is establishing itself as a significant international network of researchers (independent and those allied to particular education institutions or NGOs ) as well as anybody who has a committed interest in all things related to the study of disability and impairment. 

We thought we’d share with you some of the many ways to get involved, raise your profile and generally big up disability studies…

Our People Page

We have members from within the UK and beyond, including countries such as Canada, Kenya and Botswana.  As it is the diversity of its members which makes the DRF such a vibrant and interesting space, please consider adding your details to our People page.  If your details are already on there, please double-check they are up-to-date.  Any additions or changes can be sent to Rebecca Mallett (r.mallett@shu.ac.uk)

Recent additions include:

Nadia Ahmed: nadia.ahmed@qmul.ac.uk – PhD Research Student, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London, UK. Nadia’s research focuses on practicable working environments for disabled academics in UK based universities. She is also the president of the Ability Society at Queen Mary University of London.

Nick Chown: nick@chown.fsbusiness.co.uk – PhD Student and Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Development and Society, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.  Nick’s doctoral research focused on language methods and language-games in autism.  His previous research interests have included barriers to learning for students with autism in further education, and autism awareness and understanding in the UK police service.  He is currently investigating the use of email as an autism-friendly interviewing tool.

Harriet Cooper: harriet.aj.cooper@googlemail.com – MPhil/PhD Researcher, Department of English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. Her MA dissertation, entitled ‘The Ideal of Self-sufficiency and the Physically Disabled Subject in Contemporary Anglo-American Culture’, drew on ideas from cultural theory, disability studies, gender studies and psychoanalysis. Her PhD research explores the rise of the notion of the ‘normal child’ in Anglo-American culture and its impact on cultural constructions of the physically impaired child.

Alice Mathers: a.mathers@sheffield.ac.uk – Research Associate, Department of Landscape, Sheffield University, UK. Alice’s work is driven by an interdisciplinary approach to people-environment interactions, which straddles the academic boundaries of landscape architecture, planning, sociology, disability studies, human geography and environmental psychology. Her research with disabled people seeks to challenge current professional, academic and societal constraints that inhibit the involvement of underrepresented communities. Click here for profile.

Our Publications Page

An important part of the DRF is keeping each other up to date with the latest research and scholarly activity surrounding the study of disability.  Please consider adding your recent (or forthcoming) publications to our Publications Page.  If your details are already on there, please double-check any ‘forthcoming’ entries and send the correct details upon publication.  Any updates or additions can be sent to Rebecca Mallett (r.mallett@shu.ac.uk)

DRF Seminar Series

Details of the next seminar are below.  We will be shortly announcing dates for 2012-13 so watch this space if you would like to present a paper in an upcoming seminar.  (Please note: There is currently a slot available for the seminar on 3rd May 2012 (Thurs) 2pm-4pm. If you could and would like to fill this slot please get in touch asap.)

Date/Time: 18th April 2012 (Weds) 1pm-3pm

Venue: Room 10111 in the Arundel Building, City Campus, Sheffield Hallam University (More information on the venue can be found here.)

Slot 11: Will Southwell-Wright (Department of Archaeology, University of Durham): Past Perspectives: What can Archaeology offer to Disability Studies?

Slot 12: Tom Campbell (School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds): Bio-politics, resistance and the social model of disability

Further details (including abstracts) are available here.