Course Engaging with Critical Disability Studies: New Perspectives and Established Dilemmas

Course description
This course introduces the PhD student to different perspectives and points of contestation within the field of Critical Disability Studies. The study of disability will be presented as the starting point from which to enhance our common understanding of various political, practical and theoretical issues highly relevant to all. The course is, in line with this ambition, interdisciplinary in nature and welcomes all students researching topics of disability. The course will alternate between talks and groups sessions in which students are given the opportunity to discuss their own research as well as relate it to Critical Disability Studies.
Each participant is expected to write a one-page essay on how their study relates to critical disability studies before the beginning of the course.  

Preliminary program and topics for the talks
Day 1: 
9:00 – 9:30: Introduction and framing of the course as both a safe space and a brave space by Bjørg Kjær

9:30 – 11:00: Professor Dan Goodley: From Foundational Disability Studies to Critical Disability Studies
This lecture draws on chapters 2 and 3 of Disability Studies (third edition, Sage 2024). First, Introducing Disability Studies - really takes hold of our disability studies narrative by introducing four foundational disability studies perspectives; the social, minority, cultural and relational models of disability. We will examine how rethinking disability as a product of our relationships, communities, histories, cultures and societal configurations. We will also sit some of the tensions that are produced in articulating a universal theory of disability - one that might travel across diverse national locations - that, whilst laudable, risks not only capturing culturally specific practices around disability but also the deeply personal and complex experience of disability. Second, Exploring Critical Disability Studies - moves us from foundational ideas in disability studies into more critical and nuanced models. The last two decades have been an incredibly busy and productive time for disability studies scholars. The literature and theory has developed in some fascinating ways building on the original social, cultural, minority and relational foundations. This new work constitutes what we can term critical disability studies. In order to give some insights in this contemporary work we will briefly consider crip, ableist, Global South and dis/ability studies. An argument is made that, in 2024, the vast majority of theoretical and empirical work in our field is best considered as critical disability studies.

11:00 - 11:15: Break

11:15 – 12:00: Group discussions - with questions and “provocations” facilitated by lecturers

12:00 – 13:00: Lunch

13:00 – 14:30:  Dr. Antonios Ktenidis: Who has the ‘right’ to do disability research? Rethinking Positionality through Feminist Ethics
This lecture will focus on positionality in disability research, considering the following provocative question: ‘Who’ has the ‘right’ to do disability research? The lecture starts with a brief reference to the history of disability research in the Global North, most often conducted by non-disabled researchers, reflecting on how disabled participants were often left feeling objectified and/or exploited e.g. their experiences getting ‘mined’. The ‘Nothing about us without us’ mantra developed by disability activists (Charlton 2000) and how it has sometimes translated into research as ‘only disabled researchers should do disability research’ will be discussed. Moving on, we will look into positionality statements in disability research e.g. does the researcher identify as disabled?, and their discursive effects. A critical stance towards positionality statements more broadly will be taken, arguing that they have turned into a confessional genre of privilege. Instead, I will propose that an engagement with feminist ethics and, specifically, Alcoff’s (1990) interrogatory practices and Pillow’s (2003) reflexivity of discomfort, offers an alternative to consider positionality in (disability) research more meaningfully. To illustrate this, I will refer to my research with young people with dwarfism in secondary schools in the United Kingdom.      
Finally, we will explore the differences between research on and with disabled people, looking into how co-production as a methodological approach has enabled the latter.  

14:30 – 15:00:  Coffee break

15:00 – 16:00: Group session, discussion in smaller groups - facilitated by lecturers 

16:00 – 16:30: Wrap up for the day

Day 2: 
9:00 – 9:15: Introduction to the day ahead by Lotte Hedegaard-Sørensen

9:15 – 10:45: Professor Katherine Runswick-Cole: Re-storying care in the lives of people with learning disabilities and their family carers
This lecture draws on an on-going UK based project [NIHR135080 Tired of Spinning Plates] that seeks to engage with lives of people with learning disabilities and their family carers. The project aims to explore the mental health experiences of family cares. We are working with family carers and adults with learning disabilities to generate new insights into what matters to them when they share their experiences of caring and mental health.  Through a process of co-production and the making of short first-person films, the project explores how multimedia storytelling might make a space for engaging with ‘learning disability’, ‘care’ and ‘mental health’ beyond the dominant narratives of care as unidirectional and burdensome. We consider how the films, made by disabled people, parent-carers and sibling-carers, re-story these dominant narratives, and trouble, disrupt, and expand what it means to talk about ‘learning disability’, ‘care’ and ‘mental health’. 

10.45-11:00: Break

11:00 – 12:00: Group discussions facilitated by Bjørg Kjær on the theme: How could our research contribute to addressing issues of inequality, stigma and social justice? Can our empirical findings disrupt established theories and educational practices?

12:00 – 13:00: Lunch

13:00 – 14:00:  Bjørg Kjær: Epistemological and ontological learnings from educational practices concerning kindergarten children with autism spectrum diagnoses, ASD. An anthropological perspective.
(Dis)ability as living condition as well as social and cultural process is produced throughout the lifespan. In Denmark those processes are accentuated and institutionalized in early childhood education and care, ECEC. Inclusive education in ECEC is informed by imaginaries about disability in general and diagnoses specifically. I focus on such imaginaries and their consequences for ECEC children with ASD who are referred to an inclusive setting. 
Based on research findings my overall point is that for empirical as well as theoretical and ethical reasons we need to work actively with a double ontology in research as well as in educational practice.

14:00 – 14:30: Discussion facilitated by PhD fellow Katrine Risbank Jensen 

14:30 – 15:00:  Coffee break

15:00 – 16:00: Plenary discussion facilitated by Lotte Hedegaard-Sørensen on the theme: Constructing and reconstructing an emerging field. On systematic research methods meeting empirical openness.

16:00 – 16:30: Wrap up for the day, evaluation

Aim
The learning objectives of this course include for students to gain:

• Knowledge of the key concepts of Critical Disability Studies
• Knowledge of the development of Critical Disability Studies
• Knowledge of different perspectives within Critical Disability Studies
• The skills and competencies to develop and implement approaches core to Critical Disabilities Studies (both in regard to their research processes and subsequent analyses)

Literature

• Goodley, D. (2024). Disability studies (third edition). London: Sage. Chapters 2 and 3.
• Gani, J.K. and Khan, R.M., 2024. Positionality statements as a function of coloniality: Interrogating reflexive methodologies. International Studies Quarterly, 68(2), pp.1-12.
• Kitchin, R., 2000. The researched opinions on research: Disabled people and disability research. Disability & Society, 15(1), pp.25-47.
• Ktenidis, A. (in print planned for August 2024): ‘Ethical Complexities of Having Challenging Research Conversations: A Reflective Account and A Cautionary Tale On Speaking For ‘Others’, in Fleming, K. and Demissie, F. A. (Eds.)  'Nurturing ‘Difficult Conversations’ in Education: Empowerment, Agency and Social Justice in the UK'. Bloomsbury.
• Liddiard, K., Runswick‐Cole, K., Goodley, D., Whitney, S., Vogelmann, E. and Watts MBE, L., 2019. “I was excited by the idea of a project that focuses on those unasked questions” co‐producing disability research with disabled young people. Children & Society, 33(2), pp.154-167.
• Ríos, C.D.L. and Patel, L., 2023. Positions, positionality, and relationality in educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, pp.1-12.
• Tregaskis, C. and Goodley, D., 2005. Disability research by disabled and non‐disabled people: Towards a relational methodology of research production. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 8(5), pp.363-374.
• Runswick-Cole, K., Smith, M., Ryan, S., and Hatton, C. (2024). ‘Should we even have questions?’ From survey to exhibition – co-producing research about ‘mental health’ with carers and adults with learning disabilities. International Journal of Care and Caring (published online ahead of print 2024), available from:
• Runswick-Cole, K., Smith, M., Ryan, S. and Douglas, P. (2024). “Dis/ Entangling Disability, Mental Health, and the Cultural Politics of Care.” Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research 26(1): 28–43. https://doi.org/10.16993/sjdr.1101
• Kjær, B., (2023). Shadow categorizations: Children with `special needs´ and the ethical work of parenting: minding the gap! In: Qualitative Studies. 8, 2, pp. 101-121
• Kjær, B. (2023). Voicing the silenced: one million voices and the Danish disability experience. In: Social Work and Society. 20, 2
• Nussbaum, M. C. (2006). Disabilities and the social contract. In: Nussbaum, M. C. Frontiers of justice. Disability, nationality, species membership. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Pp. 96-154.

Target group/Participants
As stated in the description the course is interdisciplinary in nature and as such we welcome PhD-students from various disciplines at any stage of their research process.

Language    
English

Form
The course alternates bewteen lectures, plenary discussions, group work, and other activities.

ECTS-credits
3

Lecturers

Dan Goodley

Katherine Runswick-ColE

Antonios KtenidiS

Lotte Hedegaard-Sørensen

Katrine Risbank Jensen

Bjørg Kjær. If you have any questions regardring the course please contact Bjørg: bjorg@edu.au.dk

Venue
Campus Emdrup

14/11: 10.00-16.00 - Emdrupvej 101, 2400 København NV. Building 7210 (Building A), room A104
15/11: 9.00-16.00 - Emdrupvej 101, 2400 København NV. Building 7210 (Building A), room A104

Course dates:

• 14 November 2024 08:30 - 16:30
• 15 November 2024 08:30 - 16:30