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 2013 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: Deborah Hager
Thesis title: Domestic and sexual violence and disability: understanding paradigms and creating congruence to prevent violence against disabled women
University awarding degree: University of Auckland, New Zealand
Degree awarded and year: Doctor of Philosophy in Health Science, 2017
Qualitative research using feminist disability theory investigated why the domestic/sexual violence and disability sectors in New Zealand are not responding, together or separately, to the high rates of abuse of disabled women. Eighty-seven semi-structured interviews were carried out with people from government, disability and violence services from five towns and cities across the country. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Four themes were described: addressing the problem of violence against disabled people was ‘too hard’, ‘not my problem’ or not a problem at all; paradigms of best, good and poor practice were identified; disabled women are invisible and excluded in New Zealand society; and disabled women are labelled as vulnerable. The key finding is that the label of vulnerable creates an assumption that women will be abused and in response to this label virtually no resources are allocated to respond to abuse or prevent it occurring.
Email: [email protected], [email protected]
Name of the author: Ella Houston
Thesis title: The representation of disabled women in Anglo American advertising: examining how cultural disability tropes impact on the subjective wellbeing of disabled women
University awarding degree: Lancaster University, UK
Degree awarded and year: PhD Health Research, 2017
The representation of disabled women in advertising is growing. However, this thesis finds that such portrayals frequently clash with the lived realities of disabled women. Empirical data gathered via semi-structured interviews with disabled women and textual analyses of advertisements suggests that the makers of advertisements seem to presume that their representations are empowering for disabled women. However, the responses of women with impairments frequently suggest otherwise. Interestingly, the findings suggest that problematic representations of disabled women do not automatically lower individual wellbeing. Rather, disabled women often use problematic representations as an opportunity to positively reaffirm their identities as disabled women.
Email: [email protected]