… creating spaces for thinking through
We are sorry to announce that due to speaker availability the DRF session scheduled for October 19th has been cancelled.
We are expecting to go ahead with the session on November 14th and details of this will be published soon.
Best wishes,
Steph and Rebecca.
Get your ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/autism-dialogue-conference-2018-tickets-48731301635
This full day conference and workshop is a celebration and consolidation of eighteen months practice in this new field, with around fifty participants, in various settings.
Tickets are just £25 for the full day and all students can get a 20% discount using the code STUDENT20 at checkout.
The conference is an invitations to join us in celebrating the launch in Sep 2017 and continuing work, as well as learn about the benefits for autistic people and the autism community and hear about the launch of a national network. You will hear talks from numerous autistic delegates, (some of whom have been participating for over a year), researchers, therapists and a keynote from co-founder of the Academy of Professional Dialogue, Jane Ball. You can take part in interactive sessions and network with key professionals from all areas.
We had a successful introductory dialogue session SHARP members and others in July and it was unanimously felt the methodology would be very useful for Autism researchers, especially undertaking PhD’s. Whilst I still have two years to go on my MA Autism, I have been forming a research proposal for my own PhD with Autism Dialogue at the centre, partly inspired by the new Critical Arts in Health group at SHU’s Lab4Living and Design4Health.
Next week my paper ‘Autism Dialogue’ is being published and used to inform a session at the inaugural International Conference of Professional Dialogue. This is the first time the Bohm Dialogue method has been applied in the field of Autism. I am also presenting a poster at Scottish Autism in November.
I hope you will support me in making the Sheffield conference a success by coming along and inviting colleagues and friends.
Many thanks and hope to see you there.
Best wishes,
Jonny Drury
AUTISM DIALOGUE
Communicating Autism through Participatory Dialogue
www.autismdialogue.org
Get your ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/autism-dialogue-conference-2018-tickets-48731301635
Hello everyone!
I hope the new academic year is getting off to a good start! This post is to let you know about our plans for the Disability Research Forum seminar series for the 18/19 academic year.
This year, due to our workloads, we have set dates that the forum will take place on. If you would like to present please pick a date from the list below and drop me an email s.r.hannam-swain@shu.ac.uk to arrange. Sessions will be announced as usual on the blog, including location and time.
Available dates:
October 19th
November 14th
December 6th
January 29th
February 22nd
March 25th
April 12th
May 14th
Our next Disability Reading Group and Disability Research Forum session will take place at 5th June in Arundel 10310. The reading group is 12-1pm. We are looking at:
Hughes, B. (2015). Disabled people as counterfeit citizens: the politics of resentment past and present. Disability and Society. 30(7). 991-1004. doi: 10.1080/09687599.2015.1066664
The DRF session will take place in the same room at 1.30-3.30pm
Our first speaker is Leah Burch from Liverpool Hope University:
‘All parasites should perish’: Blurring the boundaries of hate speech and banter
In a bid to justify extensive cuts to welfare support, disability has been positioned as a drain on so-called ‘hardworking taxpayers.’ A climate of financial instability has nurtured a culture of hostility towards recipients of welfare support and disabled people. This paper brings together the findings of two research projects, both exploring disablist hate speech within the context of austerity. First, I present some examples of online disablist hate speech, and consider the way in which these create a metanarrative of disability as dependent and unworthy. Following this, I draw upon some experiences of disablist hate speech, as narrated by disabled people. I consider the complexity of these experiences, both in terms of the harms that they present, as well as the everyday means of resistance that challenge these everyday expressions of disablism. I also offer some methodological reflections on the use of storytelling within disability research.
Our second speaker is Prof Katherine Runswick-Cole from the University of Sheffield
Storying Inclusion: digital stories of enacting inclusive education
In this presentation, I will share some stories collected as part of a research project: Enacting Critical Disability Communities in Education. This is a two-year international Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded multimedia storytelling project, located in Toronto, Canada, focused on inclusion in schools. The project explores how multimedia storytelling might enhance inclusion by making spaces for a proliferation of representations of autism – beyond the dominant biomedical model of autism as a deficit in need of remedy. Enacting is a collaboration between Patty Douglas, PI, Brandon University, Carla Rice, from the University of Guelph and Revision: The Centre for Social Justice and Art, and me. Together with other researcher-collaborators, people who identify as autistic, family members and artist-facilitators created 17 short multimedia films and a documentary about autism and inclusion.
Katherine Runswick-Cole is Professor in Education in The School of Education at the University of Sheffield. She locates her work in the field of critical disability studies. Recent publications include: Re-thinking autism: disability, identity and equality (Ed with Mallett and Timimi, 2016, Jessica Kinglsey) and The Palgrave Handbook of Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies (Ed with Curran and Liddiard, 2017, Palgrave).
On the 8th of May in Arundel 10212A, we will have a Disability Reading Group and Disability Research Forum session. This DRF session will contain two separate presentations with a focus on enabling research on and with autistic people. From 12:30pm to 1:30pm, we will discuss the following article:
Milton, D. E. (2014). Autistic expertise: a critical reflection on the production of knowledge in autism studies. Autism, 18(7), 794-802.
The DRF session takes place in the same room from 2pm to 4pm and will consist of contributions from two researchers who are involved in inclusive autism research. The first speaker is Marianthi Kourti from Birmingham University.
Autistic autism professionals: Facing the stigma and managing the emotional labour
Autistic individuals often have very little power in the creation of autism spaces. They are seen as the service users whose needs are assessed and serviced by non-autistic individuals. Autistic professionals have tried to challenge that narrative in recent years, trying to include the autistic voice in the decision-making process both as academics and as professionals working with autistic individuals. This paper focuses on the unique identity of being an autistic autism professional and being in the intersection of two identities often considered incompatible with each other.
First of all, being an autistic autism professional comes with significant emotional labour. Employers often don’t seem ready or able to recognise the needs of an autistic employee, even if they provide extensive training for working with autistic service users. Presenting the autistic individual as only being the one in need ignores the needs of an autistic professional. Autistic professionals are faced with dealing with the ableist views of their non-autistic co-workers and the responsibility to address them. They are often treated in a tokenistic way by their organisation, a position which is very difficult to challenge for many reasons.
As members of the autistic community, autistic professionals are faced with the challenges autistic individuals face during and after work. They may have friends and loved ones who are frequently in crisis and face many barriers and, once in a position of a relative power, they feel a burden of responsibility for creating visibility and employment opportunities for their community, whose foundations as a community have been created by many hours of unpaid labour by many of its members. Simultaneously, they have to keep challenging institutions and organisations who may employ them about their inaccessibility to the autistic community as a whole.
Finally, autistic autism professionals deal with others’ internalised ableism, whilst constantly facing and challenging the damaging mainstream autism discourse and managing the nuances of stigmatisation. For all the above reasons, I think it’s important to talk about the contested identity of the autistic autism professional in a meaningful, intersectional way.
Our second speaker is Daniel Bendelman from the University of Kent.
Practice as Research within Critical Autism Studies from an artist/researchers perspective
Practice as Research (PaR), is an emerging academic field of enquiry which is concerned with epistemological enquiry situated within the practice of an array of art forms. This can range from dance, to performance and live art aesthetics. This offers artist researchers the opportunity to incorporate their own artistic practice as a field of academic research and situated place of enquiry.
In my presentation I will present some of my past pieces of PaR as an autistic researcher, concerned with the interrogation of the way the media produces a narrative of autism often rooted within stereotypes. These serve to reinforce ignorance surrounding the lived-in experience of autism.
I will speak about two past pieces of my work, ‘Fragments’ which was a PaR installation exploring the conflict between the phenomenological, semi-autobiographical experience of the ‘self’, when in opposition to mediated portrayals of autism. I will explain my working process and research behind the piece, and public impact. My second PaR piece I will speak about will be ‘We Were Here…’, this piece was loosely based on Frank Kafka’s ‘The Trial’, and was a post-dramatic exploration of the impact that the removal of Aspergers Syndrome from the DSM-5 had on my own experience as someone who was diagnosed with A.S from a young age and now strongly identifies with its history and culture.
After this I will briefly speak about the thinkers who most influence my work, and how I will be incorporating their discourses throughout my practice in my PaR PhD to offer ways of generating new knowledge within the field of both Critical Autism Studies and Performance studies.
Formally trained at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Daniel Bendelman is due to start his practice as research PhD at The University of Kent. Daniel is an installation artist, working around the topic of media representations of autism in the media and his research is concerned with the problematics that such representations work to produce within the public sphere, applying live art methodologies to produce new ways of challenging these discourses through the field of Critical Autism Studies and Performance Studies.
This Friday, 9 March 2018, we will have our next Disability Reading Group and Disability Research Forum session. The location for both is Arundel 10212B.
At 10:30-11:30am, we will discuss the following article:
Pritchard, E. (2017). Cultural Representations of dwarfs and the disabling affects on dwarfs in society. Considering Disability, 1, 1-31.
The DRF session will take place at 12-2pm. We will have two speakers.
Our first speaker is Dr Erin Pritchard from Liverpool Hope University
“He’s Adorable”: Representations of People with Dwarfism in Family Guy
This presentation examines how people with dwarfism are represented in the American animated sitcom Family Guy. Whilst the show has been criticised for its controversial humour, in this presentation I argue that the show actually exposes negative social attitudes that people with dwarfism encounter from other members of the public, whilst refraining from encouraging stereotypes of dwarfism. It builds upon Fink’s (2013) suggestion that animated comedies are a source of both humour and social commentary. It is suggested that Family Guy has the potential to challenge social attitudes towards people with dwarfism, and the way they are perceived in society, through directing the humour towards those who mock them as opposed to those with dwarfism.
Our second speaker is Dr Maria Tsakiri from Frederick University – University of Nicosia
Emotion Pictures – Documentary & Disability International Festival and crip activism
My paper will attempt to examine disability film festivals as the spaces where the representations of disability in films, and more specifically in documentary films, work towards a change that is required for understanding disability. I find that the representations that lead to this change are representations of “crip killjoys” (Johnson and McRuer). I also argue that disability film festivals combine arts and activism,bringing together crip killjoys, giving them the space to take action, and challenging notions of normative aesthetics and compulsory able-bodiedness. This paper will suggest that disability film festivals can be the spaces where crip activism works towards inclusion and social justice in austerity times. I mainly focus on the Emotion Pictures – Documentary & Disability International Festival where I undertook my fieldwork at the beginning of my research.
Maria Tsakiri is an independent researcher. She teaches at Frederick University (Cyprus) and the University of Nicosia (UNICAF). Her research interests lie in critical disability studies and film festival studies, focusing on representations of disability in documentary films and crip activism.
Due to today’s weather, our intended DRF session with Katherine Runswick-Cole and Anna Przednowek has been cancelled. We apologise for the inconvenience.
Our next DRF session will take place at the 28th of February at 3:30-5:30pm in Arundel 10212B.
The first speaker is Anna Przednowek
Caring to Include: A relational study of the everyday life and care with persons labelled with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and their families in Ontario, Canada.
How are the everyday lives of adults labelled with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (Also known as Learning Disabilities in the UK context) and their familial carers affected by shifting social policies and practices in Ontario? In addressing this research question, I draw on Feminist Political Economy as informed by Feminist Ethics and Critical Disability Studies and apply a relational approach that attends not only to the lives of these individuals (adults labelled with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and their familial carers), but, centrally, to the care relations existing between them (Muir & Goldblatt, 2011). I use this approach to explore how practices, policies and relations of care shape their everyday experiences. I take up this project in the Ontario, Canada context where, in the last forty years, deinstitutionalization and cost-constraining policy directions have reconfigured the care and support of people labelled with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities IDD. Some scholars have called for research that explores the experiences and struggles of people labelled with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and their supporting family members, whose perspectives have been neglected in both the care and disability policy literatures (Kelly, 2016; Green, 2015).
Anna Przednowek is a PhD candidate with the School of social Work at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She is currently completing a month-long term as a Visiting Scholar with the Department of Education at University of Sheffield, under the supervision of Dr. Katherine Runswick-Cole. Prior and during her doctoral studies, Anna worked as a direct support worker and social worker with children, youth, adults and seniors labelled with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and their families in Ontario for over 15 years. Her practice experience working with individuals labelled with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and their families largely informed Anna’s decision to take up this topic of “care relations’ in her research.
Our second speaker is Katherine Runswick-Cole
Storying Inclusion: digital stories of enacting inclusive education
In this presentation, I will share some stories collected as part of a research project: Enacting Critical Disability Communities in Education. This is a two-year international Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded multimedia storytelling project, located in Toronto, Canada, focused on inclusion in schools. The project explores how multimedia storytelling might enhance inclusion by making spaces for a proliferation of representations of autism – beyond the dominant biomedical model of autism as a deficit in need of remedy. Enacting is a collaboration between Patty Douglas, PI, Brandon University, Carla Rice, from the University of Guelph and Revision: The Centre for Social Justice and Art, and me. Together with other researcher-collaborators, people who identify as autistic, family members and artist-facilitators created 17 short multimedia films and a documentary about autism and inclusion.
Katherine Runswick-Cole is Professor in Education in The School of Education at the University of Sheffield. She locates her work in the field of critical disability studies. Recent publications include: Re-thinking autism: disability, identity and equality (Ed with Mallett and Timimi, 2016, Jessica Kinglsey) and The Palgrave Handbook of Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies (Ed with Curran and Liddiard, 2017, Palgrave).
Thu 22 February 2018
14:00 – 17:00 GMT
Screening Room
University of Edinburgh
50 George Square
Edinburgh
EH8 9LH
‘Defiant lives’ (Sarah Barton, 2016) is a film, telling the story of the disability rights movement in the United States, Britain and Australia, using archival footage and interviews with activists.
For more information about the film see https://defiantlives.com/
The Disability Research Edinburgh network will host this opportunity to see this film and to lead a discussion on disability activism to today. The discussion will focus on the film and its implications for current debates regarding disability rights and collective action
This film screening is part of the University of Edinburgh’s Festival of Creative Learning. For more information about the festival see the Festival website http://www.festivalofcreativelearning.ed.ac.uk/
As well as showing this film, we are organising an event on carrying out research – for information see here
Refreshments provided – please let us know if you have any specific dietary requirements
Tickets are free but please register so that we know how many people to expect.
The film will be shown on the ground floor of 50 George Square Edinburgh and is accessible to wheelchair users. For full information about access to the film screening, see here
The film will have subtitles and facilities for audio-description.
We have booked a sign language interpreter for the discussion.
Please contact us if you have any further accessibility requirements
How can I contact the organiser with any questions?
Please contact Jackie Gulland jackie.gulland@ed.ac.uk
This event may be photographed and/or recorded for promotional or recruitment materials for University and University approved third parties. For further information, please contact the organiser
The Lancaster Disability Studies conference brings together researchers, practitioners, policy makers and activists from around the world, to share and debate research, ideas and developments in disability studies. In the 21st Century disability activism plays a vital role in identifying and challenging disablist policy and practices which limit and deny the rights of disabled people across the globe. Disability activism has provided a road map of good practice, offering ways to consider the means by which disabled people can live independent lives. Key questions for Disability Studies in this context are
We invite submissions of abstracts for either symposia, paper or poster presentations on current research, ideas, issues and new developments in disability studies. In particular we welcome submissions in (but not limited to) the following areas
Abstracts of up to 300 words should be submitted by 31st March 2018. Abstracts should be submitted via the Conference’s Easy Chair webpage [nb, you have to create an easychair account to make a submission.].
Please contact Hannah Morgan with queries about the call for paper or abstract submission.
Whilst there have been a growth in publications and events on this topic, there are also tensions and divides within this area of scholarship (Milton, 2016). In addition, critical research on neurodivergent ways of being other than autism, such as ADHD, is often situated outside of Disability Studies, primarily within the fields of medical sociology or critical mental health.
The vast majority of research published regarding neurodivergent ways of being is closely aligned with clinical practice, resulting in a focus on establishing ways to ‘remediate disorder.’ Whilst there may be indications that this is changing in some quarters, and the view that a neurodivergent way of being can involve potential cognitive strengths as well as limitations is emerging, such views have traditionally been held on the margins. One implication of this has been the exclusion of neurodivergent voices in the processes of knowledge production, leading to research in the field being epistemologically and ethically suspect (Milton and Bracher, 2013).
Whilst seeking and obtaining the views of disabled people is now often a requirement of policy formation or legislation within and across national boundaries, such efforts often remain tokenistic in nature. Another implication is that researchers and policymakers often fail to examine the varying personal and social conditions in which neurodivergent people live, and the impact these have on disablement. Academic narratives about neurodiversity and neurodivergent people and cultures often do a disservice to the diversity of views therein, and can create further barriers by constraining or controlling the way neurodivergent people make their own contributions, are interpreted and are talked about.
This stream led by the Participatory Autism Research Collective (PARC) seeks to facilitate a sharing of views across critical perspectives within the neurodiversity field. We seek to broaden the field to include a diverse range of neurodivergent ways of being, bridging fields and connecting concepts and experiences, and also to make a positive change regarding the input of neurodivergent scholarship and to further a participatory ethos.
We welcome papers contributing to these goals. Indicative themes:
We will welcome submissions for papers, workshops, or other activities. We will also be looking to compile a publication from submissions to the stream.
If you have questions, please contact the chair of the PARC network: Damian Milton, damianmilton.sociology@yahoo.com
