Negotiating academic environments: using Lefebvre to conceptualise deaf spaces and disabling/enabling environments

ABSTRACT

How do deaf academics navigate the physical environments of their workplaces? Original interviews with five deaf academics working in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the UK were conducted using walking interviews to explore the ways in which they experienced the physical environment of their HEI and how they produced their own deaf spaces within their workplace. Results show that deaf academics face distinct barriers to their involvement in and access to their HEIs, and analysis using a Lefebvrian approach shows that deaf academics have their own ways of subverting the spatial expectations of the HEI to create their own pockets of lived, deaf space.

KEYWORDS:

• Deaf
• Lefebvre
• walking interviews
• environmental access
• DeafSpace

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dai O’Brien is a Senior Lecturer in BSL and Deaf Studies in York St John University, in the UK. He is deaf and uses BSL as his preferred language. His current research interests focus on deaf space and how the physical and sensory experience of being deaf influence the production of deaf spaces. His most recent research project, “The Spaces and Places of Deaf Academia” was funded by the Society for Research into Higher Education through their Newer Researchers Prize. Dai is one of the founders of the Bridging the Gap conference series in the UK which aims to build and strengthen connections between deaf academics and deaf communities. When not working, he enjoys running and yoga.

ORCID

Dai O’Brien http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4529-7568

Notes

1 I use “signing deaf” to refer to those deaf people who have a (or more than one) sign language as their first or preferred language(s). Traditionally Deaf Studies has used a d/D distinction to label people who consider themselves culturally Deaf over audiologically deaf. However, this binary has been problematised in recent years (see, for example, Kusters, De Meulder, and O’Brien (2017)).

2 See also the Deaf Geographies Sandbox resources page – https://deafgeographies.com/resources/

3 See https://www.gallaudet.edu/campus-design-and-planning/deafspace for more information on these principles.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Society for Research into Higher Education through their Annual Prize for Newer Researchers 2017.