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, Journal Administrator, 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:Hussain Mohammed Alenaizi
Thesis title:Disability and Kuwaiti Society: A Critical Realist Approach to Participatory Research in Contemporary Kuwaiti Society
University awarding degree:University of Manchester, UK
Degree awarded and year:PhD, 2017
The aim of this study is to explore disability issues in the Kuwaiti context through a participatory research project with disabled people. Six disabled people participated in this project as co-researchers, and a further eight informants (disabled and non-disabled) contributed to this research as research participants. The study suggests that, rather than reducing the ‘problem’ of disability to one limited explanation, it is more productive to take an overarching and more complex and interactional approach to disability that combines the best aspects of individual and social models as well as cultural and societal perspectives. The thesis argues that an appropriate model for understanding disability in Kuwait is rooted in a critical realist paradigm that views disability from multiple levels, including biological, medical, psychological, socio-cultural and socio-economic levels. The findings also explore the process of participatory research with the co-researchers and highlight the issues of power relations, skills development and reciprocity, decision-making processes and sharing experiences, and the possibility of this research opening the door for further research and changing people’s attitudes on disability.
Email: [email protected]
Name of the author:Murad Canbulut
Thesis title:Labeling People as ‘Disabled’: A Production of Modern Society and the Role of Marketing
University awarding degree:Izmir University of Economics, Turkey
Degree awarded and year:PhD, 2016
Disabled people and those labelled as such face discrimination and oppression by all sectors of society. This thesis seeks to investigate the impact of consumer culture among other factors on the lives of disabled people and makes theoretical contributions to the relatively silent literature in marketing about the needs of what are perceived as a vulnerable group. Taking a consumer-centric approach, with a qualitative perspective, 30 in-depth interviews were conducted with able-bodied and disabled individuals. The data are used to critique consideration of the major disability models, and to develop an alternative model, the social marketing model of disability. This model is described and marketing and societal implications are explored.
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
Name of the author:Liz Ellis
Thesis title:The Experiences of People with Learning Difficulties Living in a Rural Area
University awarding degree:The Open University, UK
Degree awarded and year:PhD, 2015
Using inclusive research, this project developed mobile methods to address the challenges of geography and capture the importance of community and environment in the lives of the co-researchers. Set in the context of the 2010–2015 Coalition Government’s increasing welfare cuts, it illustrates how communities support people and give a sense of belonging. The project suggests that communities best function as communities if they are stable enough to develop the depth of kith and kinship which helps create organic and rhizomatic networks of support. It argues that demand for a cheap, flexible and, crucially, mobile workforce undermines communities and diminishes interpersonal connections.
Email: [email protected]
Name of the author:Herminder Kaur
Thesis title:Journeys and Politics in and Around Digital Media: An Ethnographic Study of How Teenagers with Physical Disabilities Use the Internet
University awarding degree:Loughborough University, UK
Degree awarded and year:PhD, 2017
This thesis is based on a two-year ethnography, conducted in a special school, on how teenagers with physical disabilities use the Internet. The thesis focuses on four key areas: the embodied ‘rhythms’ and wayfaring that characterise how the teenagers move in and between digital media; how young people with physical disabilities struggle to overcome stigma and exclusion in their online relationships, rather than facilitate disembodied communication(s); how teenagers’ use of the Internet is mediated by their teachers and parents; and, finally, how the teenagers ‘enact’ disability in contexts including the special school, mainstream colleges and the home.
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/socialsciences/staff/herminder-kaur/
Email: [email protected]
Name of the author:Sally A. Kimpson
Thesis title:Uncertain Subjects: Disabled Women on B.C. Income Support
University awarding degree:University of Victoria, Canada
Degree awarded and year:PhD, 2016
With an explicit focus on how power is enacted and its effects in the lives of chronically ill women living on B.C. disability income support, this research reveals how disabled women survive, care for themselves and respond to government policy and practices – everyday, embodied practices of the self that constitute them as uncertain subjects – and disrupts taken-for-granted understandings of those who are disabled, female and poor. Living poorly, these disabled women experience compromised well-being and ‘dis-citizenship’, all inconvenient facts reflecting a marked disjuncture between how government programmes are publicly represented and their strategic effects.
Online access: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/6926
Email: [email protected]
Name of the author:Hui Yu Kuo
Thesis title:Women Ageing with Polio in Taiwan: A Life Course Approach
University awarding degree:University of Leeds, UK
Degree awarded and year:PhD, 2017
This thesis explores the experiences of women ageing with polio in Taiwan, taking a life course approach. The methodology adopted is qualitative, with life history interviews being conducted with 10 women aged from 50 to 60 years, who contracted polio before the age of five. The findings demonstrate that participants experience multiple oppression based on disability, gender, age and class, and this prevents them from fully participating in society throughout the course of their lives. Lack of early support put these women at risk later in life. These findings extend the limited understanding of women ageing with lifelong impairments.
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
Name of the author:Susan Mahipaul
Thesis title:‘I Walk, Therefore I Am …’: Multiple Perspectives on Disability and Rehabilitation
University awarding degree:McMaster University, Canada
Degree awarded and year:PhD, 2015
Rehabilitation science rarely engages critically with disability studies literature, thus perpetuating medicalised perspectives on disability in both theory and practice, rather than addressing social processes that restrict disabled persons’ lives. Drawing from three decades of personal narrative, this autoethnographic research is located in the author’s positioning as both a disabled woman and rehabilitation clinician, enabling her to critically explore theoretical tensions regarding disability and rehabilitation within five themes: independence, power, client-centred practice, ableism, and the social model of disability. Doing so makes visible the tensions and complexities arising from the contested intersection of disability and rehabilitation.
Online access: https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/18221
Email: [email protected]
Name of the author:Carol Puyalto
Thesis title:La vida independiente de las personas con discapacidad intelectual. Análisis de los apoyos y las barreras que inciden en la consecución de sus proyectos de vida.
(English translation: Independent Living of People with Intellectual Disabilities. Analysis of Supports and Barriers that Impact on the Achievement of their Life Projects)
University awarding degree:University of Girona, Spain
Degree awarded and year:PhD, 2016
The aim of this study is to explore the obstacles and supports that according to people with intellectual disabilities (ID) impact on their right to independent living in Spain. The study is based on data drawn from in-depth individual interviews with adults with ID. These were complemented by focus groups with family members and another with staff. A thematic analysis of the data was carried out. People with ID point to support and barriers related to home, life and community participation, couple and own-family projects, money management and protection measures as elements that condition their right to independent living.
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]