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Presentations by the WAARC Team

• Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril - led a session for ����TV PGRs and staff on "Podcasting as a Creative Research Method" -  3 February 2026

• Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril  - - Shelley Tremain Interviews Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril in an article - 21 January 2026

• Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril - (online) 28-30 January 2026 on "Politics of Urgency: A Dialogue Between Philippine Nakem Philosophy and Crip Theory” and Chair of Panel session "Being, Knowing, Doing"

• Dan Goodley, “International Perspectives – Being human as praxis: People with learning disabilities are theorists, researchers and influencers” / "Internationale Perspektiven – Menschsein als Praxis: Menschen mit Lernschwierigkeiten als Theoretiker*innen, Forscher*innen und Influencer", 2nd December 2025, Wintersemester 2025, ZeDiS-Ringveranstaltung: Revival Intersectional Studies 2.0: Strategien gegen die systematische Demontage kritisch-emanzipatori scher Wissenschaft – Wege zur nachhaltigen Institutionalisierung der Disability Studies, Centre for Disability Studies, Protestant University of Applied Sciences for Social Work & Diaconal Studies. Rauhe Haus Foundation in Hamburg.

• Armineh Soorenian, a lightning talk about 'ableism and disablism in Disabled International students’ experiences - 19th November 2025, at the online ESRC research project symposium: 'Amplifying the mental health of Black university students: A Black, Mad and Disability Studies intersectional inquiry.' 

• Dan Goodley and Rebecca Lawthom, Disability’s Exposition of the Academy: A composite narrative of belonging, community, capacity, and mutuality, 3rd November 2025, Society for Disability Studies Seminar.

• Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril, Brokering Crip Knowledge Under Epistemic Domination, 

• Dan Goodley - The depathologising university, Invited Keynote, BELMAS 

• Antonios Ktenidis BSA PGR regional event ‘Intersections of Sociology with Crip Theory, Critical Disability Studies, and Mad Studies’, 11th June 2025. Check out here for Antonios's blog from the conference

• Members of the WAARC team presenting at the  Conference, Dublin, June 10-12th 2025

  • Liz Dew, Cassie Kill, Rebecca Lawthom: Parasitic leadership and professional services work as everyday creative activism in the neoliberal-ableist academy

  • Armineh Soorenian: Reclaiming Disability as a tool for Creativity in University

  • Dr Cassie Kill and Daniel Jones: Mobilising creative methodologies to reimagine the anti-ableist university otherwise.

  • Lauren White,  Towards a Pedagogy of Joy' based on the Joyful Learning project available here:  

• Dan Goodley and Rebecca Lawthom, The depathologising university, paper presented at 

• Sophie Phillips, Navigating Writing as a Neurodivergent Woman, University of Glasgow, Spring Writing Festival, Friday 23rd May 2025. 

• Liz Dew, Introduction to WAARC to Research Contracts Team, ����TV, 29th April 2025.

• Dan Goodley, Disability Matters and Wellcome Anti-Ableist Research Culture projects,  

• For this talk, we drew upon our experiences as professional services colleagues to provide examples of inclusive practices related to the recruitment, employment, support, and retention of disabled researchers. By sharing our personal stories, we illustrate the positive impact of incorporating disability-focused strategies into research culture, ultimately fostering an environment that supports disabled researchers and challenges ableism. The recognition that university research cultures are exclusionary has become a prevalent topic in university discourse, leading to increased interventions aimed at promoting positive research culture, policy and practice. However, disability and the perspectives of disabled researchers and professional services staff are often sidelined in discussions surrounding equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). Here we wished to highlight the efforts of multiple research projects based within iHuman, a research centre at the ����TV, which seek to address this omission. Disability Matters and The Wellcome Trust Anti-Ableist Research Culture (WAARC) brings together professional services and academic staff to create and deliver a suite of activities centring disability. These projects imagine a culture in which disability is viewed as an asset and a driver for positive change. 

• Daniel Jones (2025). Pockets of Opportunity: Tourette Syndrome and the Creative Management of Impulse in Public Space(s), Geographies of Attention: Between Crisis and Creativity, Royal Geographical Society - Institute of British Geographers Annual Conference 2025. 26-29 August 2025

• (Link, PDF, 431.21 KB)
  Daniel P. Jones shared findings from his research into Tourette Syndrome, experiences of public space, and the production of solidarity within the Tourettic community at the European Society for the Study of Tics & Tourette Syndrome Annual Meeting 2025 in Greece. These findings highlight the value of digital and online spaces for Tourettic adults, and highlights the need for further intersectional consideration in support service provision, particularly surrounding queer, trans and global majority ethnic experiences. 21-23 May 2025

Related Anti-ableist publications from the WAARC team

WAARC team members have led on a number of Special issues and Edited Collections during the time of our project that bring together some of the cutting edge debates and contributions from critical disability studies:

• Kirsty Liddiard and Rebecca Lawthom (editors), : contributions to the Special Issue, exploring voice, embodiment, power, sexuality, care, labour, hetero/sexism, disablism, and ableism.

• Tsitsi Chataika and Dan Goodley (editors).The Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Disability Studies. London: Routledge, published March 2024). Led, curated and driven by Dr Tsitsi Chataika - with editorial input from Disability Matters's Dan Goodley - this exciting new text challenges the Western, European and North American tendencies of critical disability studies through centring and exploring postcolonial theory. More details can be found 
   

We also support a number of Working Papers through which the WAARC team critically engage with emerging findings and deliberations with a specific focus on our aims and deliverables. 
 

• Missive from the Accommodations Loop by Daniel P. Jones and Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril
  A critical disability studies take on the question of accommodations in the university

•  published in the geoz.one -  Editors Daniel Jones and Lauren White and contributors Daniel P. Jones, Lauren White, Liz Dew, Elaina Gauthier-Mamaril, Armineh Soorenian, Ankita Mishra, Cassie Kill, Helen Evans, Christina Lee, & Sophie Phillips (2025). 

• created space for postgraduate and early career researchers to collaborate and critically engage in the concept of joy. It was funded by the Participatory Research Network and iHuman

• a series of short provocative pieces about disability studies and research; a joint venture of iHuman, ����TV; Centre for Disability Studies, University of Leeds; Disability Innovation Institute, UNSW and NIE/NTU Singapore.

And we are sharing Books and Journal articles - Open Access peer reviewed papers - written by the WAARC team that either emerge directly from our work or reflect team members' scholarship that are impacting on our discussions within the team. These papers consider the power of podcasting to promote dialogue and theorisation; theoretical ideas relating to understanding the anti-ableist university; the challenges of particular research methods when these methods are built upon ableist assumptions; the urgent need to engage disabled people and their representative organisations at all stages of research:

• Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril  - reflects on  , in Hypatia, published March 2026.

• - In the third post of an ongoing monthly series exploring podcasting practice and the medical humanities, Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril reflects on how disabled communities of care share practices and knowledges from polio to COVID.

• - Bringing together current research with lived experience, this book by Sophie Phillips considers the challenges of being an autistic woman in postgraduate education with the aim to raise awareness, challenge misconceptions and ignite change within the system.

• - Reflecting on his own zine-practice as geographer, Daniel P. Jones calls for a shift to the focus on zineing as process and politics of refusal that explicitly challenges neoliberal, capitalist agendas. 

• - Dan Goodley's paper develops a conversation with decolonisation to pitch a novel mode of engagement; depathologising the university

• - This paper offers an original affirmative proposition: that the university is already depathologising - by Dan.Goodley, Kirsty Liddiard and Rebecca Lawthom

• - Through reference to critical posthumanities and critical disability studies theory, attend to broken, patchwork, kintsugi and crip ethnographies that, we argue, allow us to sit in the liminal space between qualitative/post-qualitative research and human/posthuman theory by Bojana Daw Srdanovic, Nikita Hayden, Dan Goodley, Rebecca Lawthom and Katherine Runswick-Cole. 

• - Bottomley et al reflect on developing the Participatory Ethics Good Practice Guidelines; as a research team of clinical, academic and advocacy-based researchers with and without learning disabilities.

• - Bishop et al's study aims to understand system barriers to research participation for people with intellectual disabilities.

• - Dan Goodley posits that being human as praxis—in relation to the lives of People with Learning Disabilities—offers a significant and original insight into critical and social theory across the social sciences and humanities.

Scholarship symposia, films and their recordings 

Moreover, we are fortunate to draw upon scholarship symposia, films and their recordings which bring together the work of emerging and established disability studies and disabled researchers as well as the writing of the Disability Matters team:

• is a growing resource of short papers, filmed presentations and Q&A sessions with emerging disability studies scholars from around the world. 

• - gives links to outputs emerging from this six year pan-national programme of research that centres disability as the driving subject of inquiry in the health, research and science sectors

• - This webinar – hosted by the Childhood, Law & Policy Network (CLPN) on the 25th February 2025 – brought together three experts to discuss theoretical and practical questions concerning children and disability. Panellists: Anastasia Todd (the University of Kentucky), Antonios Ktenidis (the ����TV), and Susan Flynn (Trinity College Dublin). Chair: Hedi Viterbo (Queen Mary University of London).

• - Daniel P. Jones recently worked with Fennia to produce the first peer-reviewed easy-read only paper that introduces the value of using easy-read formats in Geography. It encourages us to reconsider easy-read formats as more-than afterthought, asking what might come from using the format as a starting point in research dissemination. 

• - Daniel P. Jones expands on his work in WAARC on inclusive research methodologies with this new collaborative commentary co-authored with Danni Phoenix-Kane. The paper reflects on the authors experiences of conducting research into Tourette Syndrome as two Tourettic researchers themselves, focusing on themes of representation, additional labour, and data collection, before calling for removing current barriers to research rather than making calls for future involvement of Tourettic researchers. 

• Phillips, Sophie, and Armineh Soorenian. 2025. ‘To Wear or Not to Wear: Face Masks in Disability Focused Events’. The Polyphony (blog). 8 April 2025. .

• Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina and Daniel P Jones. 2025. Being a masking crip killjoy. The Polyphony (blog). 2 June 2025.