Here is a list of events that took place in 2019-2020
Monday, 18th November
Time: 2 – 4pm
Place: Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus. Charles Street Building, Room 12.4.18 (This is on the fourth floor), Howard Street, S1 1WB.
Speaker 1: Celina Kamecka
Title: Dis-ability = dis-active? Reasons for discussing civic activity of Polish students with intellectual disabilities
Abstract:
For 4 years I have been conducting civic education workshops in special schools in which students with intellectual disability learn in Poland. During this time I carried out 3 research projects regarding the civic activity and identity of students and I would like to talk about it. It will not surprise anyone how important and effective civic education is. And it is already a truism to speak about the rights guaranteed to persons with disabilities by the UN Conventions. That is why in my presentation I would like to focus on two other aspects. First, how Polish students with intellectual disabilities perceive themselves as citizens, and how they evaluate their civic activity. Secondly, how the support system for people with intellectual disabilities in Poland can determine their perception of their citizenship. Presenting the results of my research, I will focus on video recordings that students have prepared themselves as part of the film workshop title: “what is the common good for me”. And on our conversations regarding the space of their civic activity, which is a deepening of the answers obtained in the adapted questionnaire for quantitative research. Author’s adaptation of the ready questionnaire for civic activity to the needs of people with intellectual disabilities – which I will also present, showed new fields of social and research participation of my respondents.
Speaker 2: Stephen Connolly
Title: Everyone should do emancipaticipatory research, but i don’t want to do it again.
Abstract:
This talk will be on the issues encountered when doing emanciparticipatory research right. Focusing on the methodology of my PhD I will be discussing the unexpected but now obvious paradoxical effect where the bigger the strength for those that would be traditionally termed participants, the bigger the issue you face as a researcher.
Terms linked to emanciparticipatory research would be freedom, flexibility, open and no time pressures. However within the confines of academia these terms present a problem that must be navigated for emanciparticipatory research to survive.
This overarching problem also forms the foundations for my argument that emancipatory research is a goal that currently can not be achieved within academia and i am to explain why.
Thursday, 12th December
Time: 2 – 4pm
Place: Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus. Charles Street Building, Room 12.2.19 (This is on the second floor), Howard Street, S1 1WB.
Speaker 1: Sam Fellows
Title: “Why symptom-based approaches are not enough: the value of psychiatric diagnoses”
Abstract:
Critics are concerned that psychiatric diagnoses fail to accurately describe patients and therefore should be abandoned. Most patients do not have all symptoms associated with their diagnosis and most patients have symptoms which are not associated with their diagnosis. Knowing someone has a diagnosis seems to convey much less useful information compared to knowing what symptoms someone has. This situation has lead critics of psychiatric diagnosis to claim diagnoses make no contributions to understanding individuals, they are harmful distractions and should be abandoned (e.g. Timini, Gardner & McCabe 2011). Psychiatrists should instead establish what symptoms an individual has rather than give them a diagnosis. In this paper I will employ Ronald Giere’s account of scientific theories to show that those critics are mistaken to see psychiatric diagnosis as making no useful contribution.
Giere describes how scientific theories are abstract generalisations which lack specific detail. For example, Newton’s laws, by themselves, make no claims about the world. Rather, they guide the building of more specific models and these specific models can be used to make claims about the world. He describe scientific theories as “recipes for constructing models” (Giere 1994, p.293). This notion of scientific theories as recipes which guide the building of less abstract models has not yet been applied to psychiatric diagnoses.
Psychiatric diagnoses should be seen as recipes for constructing models of people. I argue they guide the construction of models of people, making contributions to understanding individuals which are absent when simply focusing upon what symptoms are being presented by specific individuals. Firstly, many symptoms can be subtle and difficult to spot. A patient may be unaware of the symptom and psychiatrists cannot practically investigate for every possible symptom. Psychiatric diagnoses can help guide investigation of symptoms. If an individual exhibits a few symptoms of a psychiatric diagnosis then there is reason to investigate for other symptoms of that psychiatric diagnosis. For instance, if an individual exhibits low social skills and low eye contact, both of which are symptoms of autism, then there is reason to investigate for other symptoms of autism. This may help spot subtle symptoms such as rigid thinking or difficulty accommodating to changes. Thus the diagnosis guides investigating for the presence of symptoms. Secondly, patients fluctuate in the symptoms they present over time. The symptoms which are presented to a psychiatrist at time of interview may not cover symptoms previously exhibited or those exhibited in the future. However, knowing the individual has a diagnosis which is associated with a range of symptoms, more than any one diagnosed person actually exhibits, guides awareness towards a range of possible symptoms not present in a diagnosed person at one specific time. The diagnosis guides awareness towards alternative symptoms that may present at other times within diagnosed individuals. Thirdly, symptoms themselves have a level of generality and may manifest in quite different ways. For example, the low social skills of autistic individuals are typically quite different to the low social skills of schizophrenic individuals. Thus knowing the diagnosis of an individual can lead to greater understanding of how specific symptoms manifest. The diagnosis guides building more realistic models of ways individuals manifest symptoms.
By framing psychiatric diagnosis in terms of Giere’s account of scientific theories I have shown how psychiatric diagnosis make a contribution to understanding individuals. Thus critics of psychiatric diagnosis are mistaken to believe psychiatric diagnosis make no contribution and are mistaken to believe they should be abandoned.
References:
Giere, Ronald, N. (1994). The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Theories. Philosophy of Science, 61/2, 276-296.
Timini, Sami., Gardner, Niel. & McCabe, Bain. (2011). The Myth of Autism (Palgrave-McMillian).
Speaker 2: Richard Woods
Title: Is the concept of Demand Avoidance Phenomena (Pathological Demand Avoidance) real or mythical?
Abstract:
This talk presents results of a content analysis of the diagnostic and screening tools for the proposed autism subtype Demand Avoidance Phenomena (DAP, commonly called Pathological Demand Avoidance), investigating if the construct has specificity. There is much growing interest in DAP and despite the lack of supporting evidence, some expect it to be included in England’s coming Autism Strategy. Specificity is when a trait is unique to a particular subject. I replicated a similar content analysis conducted by Nick Chown on tools for Broader Autism Phenotype and Autistic Traits. His results suggest that those constructs lacked specificity and are reified constructs. It is frequently argued in the DAP literature that it lacks specificity, by replicating Nick Chown’s study; I am attempting to falsify this viewpoint. I will present my full results at the talk. My preliminary analysis of the main 2 tools for DAP, the Extreme Demand Avoidance-Questionnaire and 11 items on the Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication Disorders, support the common notion that DAP lacks specificity. These results would indicate how seriously DAP should be taken and if it should additionally be diagnosed in non-autistic persons.
Thursday, 30th January – CANCELLED
(subject to people signing up as it’s short notice)
Time: 10am – Noon
Place: Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus, Arundel Building room 10212B (this is on the second floor), Howard Street, S1 1WB.
Speaker 1: Susan Anderson
Title: Speaking well and ill in the Renaissance
Abstract: In this presentation I will present an overview of my research on disability in the Renaissance. As an example, I will focus in on some work recently completed on speech impediments in the period. I’ll talk about the challenges of researching historical disability in the Renaissance period and why I think it is important for contributing to understanding and tackling disability oppression today.
Speaker 2: TBC
Title:
Abstract:
Monday, 10th February
Time: 2-4pm
Place: Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus. Charles Street Building, Room 12.5.07 (This is on the fifth floor), Howard Street, S1 1WB.
Speaker 1: Manny Madriaga
Title: Deconstructing with DisCRT: Marking whiteness and ableism in the English higher education outreach gospel
Abstract:
Employing a DisCRT theoretical framework (Annamma 2017), this paper highlights the intermingling of whiteness and ableism in marginalizing students of color in accessing English higher education. It has already been evidenced that students of color who aspire to pursue higher education in England have constrained choices (Reay et al. 2001; Ball et al. 2002). Literature has shown that student applicants of color are not as likely as white applicants to gain entrance into prestigious higher education institutions, like the universities of Oxford and Cambridge (Boliver 2013). As of yet, there has been no meaningful sector engagement or Government response to this issue. This paper sketches this out, drawing out evidence and themes from a deconstructed reading (Slee and Allan 2001) of a sample of statutory university policy documents required by each higher education institution in England.
This paper will shed light on how notions of social justice and equity have been deracialized and neutralized (Solórzano and Yosso 2002), reproducing ableism and normalcy (Davis 1995; Erevelles and Minear 2010; Annamma et al. 2013), in English higher education outreach policy and practice. Questions that have informed this work are: (1) How race and disability are considered and recognised in English university access policy texts? (2) What has been the extent of universities pushing for race-specific initiatives within these texts? (3) How much of an attempt, if any, were universities attempting to reach out to students of color and their communities in these texts? With race at the forefront of discussion, this paper confirms that English higher education conspires (Gillborn 2006) to sustain white supremacy.
References
Annamma, S. (2017) Cartographies of Inequity. In Morrison, D., Annamma, S., & Jackson, D. (Eds). Critical Race Spatial Analysis: Mapping to Understand and Address Educational Inequity. Virginia: Stylus, 32-50.
Annamma, S. A., D. Connor and B. Ferri (2013) Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability, Race Ethnicity and Education, 16(1): 1-31.
Ball, Stephen J., D. Reay and M. David (2002) ‘Ethnic Choosing’: Minority ethnic students, social class and higher education choice. Race Ethnicity and Education 5 (4): 333-357.
Boliver, V. (2013) How fair is access to more prestigious UK universities. British Journal of Sociology 64 (2): 344-364.
Davis, L. 1995. Enforcing normalcy: Disability, deafness and the body, London: Verso.
Erevelles, N. and A. Minear. (2010) Unspeakable Offenses: Untangling Race and Disability in Discourses of Intersectionality. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 4 (2): 127–146.
Reay, D., J. Davies, M. David, and S.J. Ball (2001) Choices of Degree or Degrees of Choice? Class, ‘Race’ and the Higher Education Choice Process. Sociology 35 (4): 855-874.
Slee, R., and J. Allan. 2001. Excluding the included: A reconsideration of inclusive education. International Studies in Sociology of Education 11 (2) (07/01): 173-92.
Solórzano, D. G., and T. J. Yosso. 2002. Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry 8 (1) (02/01; 2017/04): 23-44
Speaker 2: Stephen Connolly
Title: Should we drop the label of ‘vulnerable’ in ethics applications?
Abstract: TBC
Tuesday, 10th March – Cancelled due to the UCU Industrial Action
Time: 2-4pm
Place: Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus. Charles Street Building, Room 12.2.19 (This is on the second floor), Howard Street, S1 1WB.
Speaker 1: John Quinn
Title:
Abstract:
Speaker 2: Jen Slater
Title:
Abstract:
Monday, 30th March – CANCELLED to protect against COVID-19
Time: 2-4pm
Place: Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus. Charles Street Building, Room 12.2.10 (This is on the second floor), Howard Street, S1 1WB.
Speaker 1: Katrina Fleming
Title:
Abstract:
Speaker 2: Leah Burch
Title:
Abstract:
Thursday, 7th May – CANCELLED to protect against COVID-19
Time: Noon – 2pm
Place: Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus. Charles Street Building, Room 12.2.10 (This is on the second floor), Howard Street, S1 1WB.
Speaker 1: Cathy Soreny
Title:
Abstract:
Speaker 2: Josephine Sirotkin
Title:
Abstract:
Disability Research Forum 