Disability Studies MA

01/06/2026

I am pleased to report that the second edition of Cultural Disability Studies in Education is now in press. This book is a set text on the Disability Studies MA, specifically for the Disability & Disciplines module.

I am grateful for the endorsements of my eminent colleagues, Prof Tanya Titchkosky (University of Toronto) and Prof Nicola Martin (London South Bank University).

I am also grateful to Fran Zerva, who as well as being my academic support worker and a graduate of the Disability Studies MA, has created the artwork for the front cover of the new edition.

For more information:

Cultural Disability Studies in Education unites cultural disability studies and Disability Studies in Education in recognising education as a discourse between educators and students who examine how disability is represented across academic disciplines and curricular to language, theory, narrative,....

01/06/2026

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies

Volume 20 Issue 2

JLCDS is available from Liverpool University Press, online and in print, to institutional and individual subscribers; it is indexed by Scopus and Web of Science; it is also part of the Project MUSE collection to which the links below point.

Research Articles

Literary Action as Cure: Colonial Modernity and Disability Aesthetics
Nilanjana Bhattacharya
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991317

Down Syndrome Representation in Jesse Ball’s Novel Census (2018)
Benjamin Fraser
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991318

Cripping Time, Creating Community: Form and Affect in Molly McCully Brown’s The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded and Diamond Sharp’s Super Sad Black Girl
Kaitlin Hoezler
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991319

Difficult Patients, Difficult Poems: Madness and the Rhetorics of Difficulty
Drew McEwan
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991320

Dysfluent Messengers: Angelic Aphasia in the Novels of B. Catling
Victor Rees
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991321

‘Demi-Autistic, Genetically Speaking’: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and the Aspergian Loop
Holly Thompson
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991322

Comments from the Field

Climate Crisis and Disability: An Urgent Call for Inclusion and Action
Divina Maria Alex
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991323

Centre for Culture and Disability Studies: 15th Anniversary Symposium, 30 May 2025, Liverpool Hope University, UK
Frantzeska Zerva
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991324

Book Reviews

Scott Herring, Aging Moderns: Art, Literature, and the Experiment of Later Life.
Arianna Introna
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991325

Nicole Eugene, Narratives of Narcolepsy in Everyday Life: Exploring Intricacies of Identity, Sleepiness and Place.
Anne Martin
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991326

Emma Sheppard, Chronic Pain, B**M and Crip Time.
Vickery Stamp
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991327

Shivani Gupta, No Looking Back.
Vidya Vishwakarma
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/991328

21/05/2026

Routledge & CRC Press Series: This new book series represents both a contribution to, and a departure from, the academic field of critical disability studies. According to some concerns abou

15/05/2026

As Editor-in-Chief, I am pleased to announce that the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies now has 65 articles live, some of which are open access:

Abstract. Disability can be thought of as the most universal of all identities. Whatever our gender, race, religion, nationality, class, or sexuality, we m

14/05/2026

New Beginnings in Culture and Disability Studies:
A Multiple Launch Event

5 June, 2026, Liverpool Hope University

10am-4.30pm, EDEN Arbour Room, EDEN Building, Childwall Campus

The Centre for Culture and Disability Studies (CCDS) invites you to attend the 2026 multiple launch event.

This year marks new beginnings for Dr Saul Leslie’s debut novel, A Working Title I Want to Change, and Dr Liam Owens’s Disability Sport MA, as well as Prof David Bolt’s monograph, The Playground Model of Disability; edited volume, Cultural Stations of Disability; and The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies.

There will be a dozen presentations across the day, including CCDS core members Dr Erin Pritchard, Dr Leah Burch, and Dr Emma Swai; senior colleagues such as our Vice Chancellor, Prof Penny Haughan; and Pro Vice-Chancellor, Prof Atulya Nagar; and special guests Dr Owen Barden (Trinity College Dublin), Dr Maryam Farahani (University of Liverpool), Dr Felipe Moreira (University of Leicester), Dr Alison Wilde (Northumbria University), and Dr Nina Michelle Worthington (Canterbury Church Christ University).

To attend this free event it is necessary to book via our online store:
https://store.hope.ac.uk/product-catalogue/faculty-of-education-and-social-sciences/school-of-social-sciences/events/new-beginnings-in-culture-and-disability-studies-a-multiple-launch-event

This is a face-to-face event but we hope to record and share it via the CCDS YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/

12/05/2026

New Beginnings in Culture and Disability Studies:
A Multiple Launch Event

Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University

EDEN Arbour Room/Lounge, EDEN Building, Childwall Campus, L16 9JD

5 June, 2026

10am Welcome from the Pro Vice-Chancellor, Prof Atulya Nagar

10.15 Monograph Launch, Prof David Bolt, introduced by Dr Ana Bê Pereira
The Playground Model of Disability: Dis/Honesty Tropes in Contemporary British Sociocultural Representation

11-11.15 Refreshments

11.15 Course Launch, Dr Liam Owens
Disability Sport MA

11.45 Volume Launch, Chaired by Dr Erin Pritchard
Cultural Stations of Disability: A Moment in Discourse
- Dr Emma Swai, A New Testament: Changing Positionality, Changing Interpretation
- Dr Maryam Farahani, Figure Skating Pace and Olympic Policy: The Problematics of Performance Normativity Cultures in Women’s Sport
- Dr Felipe Moreira, Dury and Dwoskin: Disabled Gazes and De-Normalised Sociocultural Archives
- Dr Erin Pritchard, Cultural Stations of Dwarfism: From Little Helpers to Burney Nesbitt

1pm Lunch (not provided)

2pm Novel Launch, Dr Saul Leslie, introduced by Head of Humanities, Prof Stephen Kelly
A Working Title I Want to Change

2.45 Refreshments

3-4.15 Encyclopedia Launch, Chaired by Dr Leah Burch
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies
- Dr Alison Wilde, Disability and Activism
- Dr Owen Barden, Participatory Historical Research with People with Learning Disabilities
- Dr Nina Michelle Worthington, How Disability Engages UK Theatre Practice
- Dr Leah Burch, Disability and Hate

4.15-4.30 Reflections from the Vice Chancellor, Prof Penny Haughan

22/04/2026

Attention Disability Studies MA students, past, present, and future! You are especially welcome to join us for this free event:

New Beginnings in Culture and Disability Studies:
A Multiple Launch Event

5 June, 2026, Liverpool Hope University

10am-4.30pm, EDEN Arbour Room, EDEN Building, Childwall Campus


This year marks new beginnings for Saul Leslie’s debut novel, A Working Title I Want to Change, and Dr Liam Owens’s Disability Sport MA, as well as Prof David Bolt’s monograph, The Playground Model of Disability; edited volume, Cultural Stations of Disability; and Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies.

On culture and disability studies, there will be a dozen presentations across the day, including CCDS core members Dr Erin Pritchard, Dr Leah Burch, and Dr Emma Swai, and special guests such as our Vice Chancellor, Prof Penny Haughan, Dr Owen Barden (Trinity College Dublin), Dr Maryam Farahani (University of Liverpool), Dr Felipe Moreira (University of Leicester), Dr Alison Wilde (Northumbria University), and Dr Nina Michelle Worthington (Canterbury Church Christ University).

To attend the free event it is necessary to book via our online store:
https://store.hope.ac.uk/product-catalogue/faculty-of-education-and-social-sciences/school-of-social-sciences/events/new-beginnings-in-culture-and-disability-studies-a-multiple-launch-event

This is a face-to-face event but we hope to record and share it via the CCDS YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/

22/04/2026

Interrogating the ethics of visual methods: A critical disability studies critique of photovoice by Danielle Kohfeldt, David Bolt, and Robert Majzler.

Photovoice is widely regarded as a critical participatory method that promotes social change by centering the visual narratives of marginalized communities. This paper offers a methodological and epistemological critique of photovoice grounded in critical disability studies, examining the ethical tensions that arise from its reliance on visibility as a pathway to recognition and social change. Drawing on the concept of ocularnormativity, we argue that photovoice reproduces dominant hierarchies of knowledge by relying on a postpositivist epistemology that equates visual imagery with legitimacy, and by relying on visual tropes of dysfunction, decay, and debility to signify harm. These tropes rely on disability aesthetics to make oppression legible to a wider audience, but with ethical consequences rarely acknowledged in the literature. Using cripistemology as a guiding framework, we interrogate how photovoice, as a participatory visual method, risks reinscribing ableist ideologies. Rather than simply reform the method, we ask researchers to imagine how cripping photovoice may better align the method with the aims of disability justice. This paper contributes to ongoing conversations about the ethics of representation and accessibility in qualitative research.

It is now freely available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590260126000275?via%3Dihub

16/04/2026

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies: Now Live

With Prof David Bolt as Editor-in-Chief, alongside an international gathering of Area Editors, as well as a dedicated team at Oxford University Press, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies has now gone live.

This encyclopedia provides current, peer-reviewed, trustworthy articles. It opens with 60 extended articles, including 5 that are open access.

Access the content here:

Abstract. Disability can be thought of as the most universal of all identities. Whatever our gender, race, religion, nationality, class, or sexuality, we m

30/03/2026

Top 10 Most Popular CCDS YouTube Films

1. Robert McRuer, “Crip Times,” 4,875 views, posted 1 Sep. 2017.
2. Owen Barden, “Posthumanism and Disability,” 3,784 views, posted 20 Mar. 2020.
3. Michael Stokes, “All You Zombies,” 2,328 views, posted 4 Oct. 2017.
4. Ella Houston, “The Representation of Disabled Women in Anglo American Advertising,” 2,270 views, posted 25 Oct. 2019.
5. Peter Beresford, “From Psychiatry to Disability Studies and Mad Studies,” 1,865 views, posted 2 Jul. 2015.
6. Lennard J. Davis, “Sorrowless Lamentation,” 1,633 views, posted 22 Nov. 2017.
7. Lennard J. Davis, “The Stories We Tell: The Americans with Disabilities Act After 25 Years,” 1,625 views, posted 6 May 2015.
8. Erin Pritchard, “The Social and Spatial Experiences of Dwarfs in Public Spaces,” 1,441 views, posted 14 Feb. 2020.
9. David Bolt, “Cultural Disability Studies in Education,” 1,060 views, posted 25 Jul. 2018.
10. Margaret Price, “An Unstable and Fantastical Space of Absence,” 982 views, posted 15 Dec. 2016.

These videos and many more are available on the CCDS YouTube channel. The popularity report is correct on 27 March 2026.