Goodley, D., Liddiard, K. orcid.org/0000-0002-1220-3740 and Lawthom, R. (2025) The depathologising university. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 27 (1). pp. 120-133. ISSN 1501-7419
Abstract
It has been argued that the university needs depathologising, a radical rethink and reorientation of the university’s relationship with disability. This paper offers an original affirmative proposition: that the university is already depathologising. Inspired by disabled people’s activism and scholarship, we explore the ways in which academics, researchers and research professional colleagues are depathologising the disablist and ableist university. We reflect on our practices as principal investigators and research leaders of three funded research projects using novel composite conversations (a unique methodological form of experimental writing) and explore (i) pushing back at university bureaucracy towards co-production; (ii) critically appropriating the performative university and (iii) enabling access as colleagues. Depathologisation invites us to pause, to meditate and to significantly reimagine the university. And those of us who work in the university are the university, and we all have work to do.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | depathologising; university; research project; critical disability studies; research culture |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Education |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number WELLCOME TRUST (THE) 226472/Z/22/Z |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 14 Mar 2025 13:02 |
Last Modified: | 28 Mar 2025 15:14 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Stockholm University Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.16993/sjdr.1240 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:224100 |