We have agreed to provide within the journal a list of completed theses in the field of Disability Studies. This will be an important resource for readers to follow through as well as provide the names of colleagues who are new entrants to the discipline.
This is an open invitation for theses completed from 2012 which fit with the Aims and Scope of Disability & Society.
Please provide the following information:
Name of the author
Thesis title
University awarding degree
Degree awarded and year:
A 100 word synopsis of the thesis
Email address
Please forward this information to Helen Oliver, Disability & Society Editorial Office
Email: [email protected]
We will include this call for Doctoral Announcements in forthcoming issues of the journal.
Executive Editors
Name of the author: Tim Marshall
Thesis title: The everyday lives of young people with intellectual disability in a northern Indian city: an ethnographic study
University awarding degree: University of Bristol, UK
Degree awarded and year: PhD, 2017
This study draws on a social relational model of disability to explore the relationships between young people with intellectual disability and those around them in the contexts of family, non-government organisation (NGO) centre, and public life. It identifies a range of enabling practices which support young people to realise agency and competence in family and NGO settings, but which are largely absent from public contexts, restricting intellectually disabled young people’s opportunities and possibilities. The study suggests that a focus on expanding enabling practices can complement better-established understandings of disabling barriers to social participation.
Funded by Economic and Social Research Council
Email: [email protected]
Name of the author: Amie O’Shea
Thesis title: ‘Just a rare girl’: Gender and disability in life stories produced with young women with intellectual disabilities
University awarding degree: La Trobe University, Australia
Degree awarded and year: PhD, 2017
This project sought to understand intellectual disability from within lived experience. The participants were six women with intellectual disabilities aged 18–30 from Melbourne, Australia. Informed by Foucault’s work on power and resistance, it explored how discourses of gender and intellectual disability functioned in young women’s lives and how these young women behaved in response; to enhance our understanding of both gender and intellectual disability in contemporary Australian society. This research was positioned within a collaborative space where stories from the participants’ lives were co-produced with the researcher. The research method was designed to promote authentic, meaningful opportunities for self-representation.
Email: [email protected]
Name of the author: Emily J Steel
Thesis title: The right choice? An interpretive policy analysis of assistive technology in Australian disability services
University awarding degree: The University of Queensland, Australia
Degree awarded and year: PhD, 2017
This thesis explores how assistive technology and choice are interpreted in contemporary disability rights, and how these rights are implemented in Australian policy. People with disability use assistive technology products and services to enable participation in society by mediating the effects of impairment and environmental barriers. Interpretive policy analysis methods were used to explore the perspectives of people who develop, implement and are affected by policy, specifically the National Disability Strategy and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This thesis identifies theoretical and practical challenges to effective assistive technology provision, and proposes approaches to realise the vision of an inclusive society.
Email address: [email protected]
Name of the author: Satine Winter
Thesis title: Navigating the battleground: Autism policy and human rights for children with autism spectrum disorders in Australia
University awarding degree: Griffith University, Australia
Degree awarded and year: PhD, 2017
This thesis explores the first autism specific federal e-government policy in Australia, Helping Children With Autism (HCWA) and how it positions parent users and complies with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It employs a combined theoretical framework of sociology, models of disability and human rights and a Qualitative Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis methodology to analyse landing pages from the website. Findings reveal parents positioned within a charity and medical model of disability and the autism policy lacking alignment with human rights. A newly conceptualised model of disability is introduced in the field of critical disability studies.
Email: [email protected]
Name of the author: Chao Zhang
Thesis title: Citizenship, Civil Society Organization and Local Public Space: Disability Right Advocacy Strategies in China
University awarding degree: Tsinghua University, China
Degree awarded and year: PhD, 2017
Advocacy has become a strategic choice for public participation by disability people in China. However, there are differences in the way this is developing in China compared to Western countries. A qualitative method was adopted to explore advocacy activities by disabled people and their families, including semi-structured interviews and virtual ethnography. The study found that the strategies adopted were either a formal internal coalition with vulnerable group identity; informal external contentious pressure by popular protest; or, synthesized cooperation with government. This research explains the reproduction of citizenship and disability advocacy strategies in non-western settings.
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]