This Special Issue of Disability & Society has been completed in the year our journal community has been shaken and saddened by the sudden death of one of our Founding Editors Professor Mike Oliver. Michael James Hoiles Oliver, disability activist and academic, born 3rd February 1945; died 2nd March 2019.
The theme for this Special Issue, which had been decided in 2017, was at the heart of Mike’s lifelong aspiration for the journal to bridge the gap between disability, activism and the academy enabling disabled people to be heard and to create change of their own prioritising. When the question of ‘time for renewal?’ was mooted, he immediately wanted to write. He felt time for renewal of the journal’s original values and purpose was certainly due. He wanted to comment on ideas gaining ascendancy in the field of disability studies which he felt need bringing right back to original purposes and values of the journal. In a time when the rights and interests of disabled people are being renounced rather than expanded, he wrote to let in hope that the journal community will never forget that disability studies emerged out of democratic organisations of disabled people, and of the importance of holding on to this history. In this moment of brief return to writing for the journal he was, as always, completely caught up in matching his voice in the academy with the power of his activism signing off his submission ‘I don’t want to turn it into a proper article—our local wheelchair service has virtually collapsed and I’ve been dragged into trying to sort it out with other users’. It was never enough for Mike to have the pages of Disability & Society filled with articles building the careers of academics on the back of disability studies. He made us think about the power of the journal for brokering real change, he made us question the relationship between disability, activism and the academy. He wanted academic work to be married with action and change. It is therefore immensely poignant to open this Special Issue with Mike’s piece to set the feeling of his commitment to renewal of the relationship between disability, activism and the academy across our reading of the papers in its volumes.
Another of the journal’s long-serving Executive Editors, Professor Carol Thomas, is equally well known in the field of disability studies for unwavering commitment to the importance of connecting academic engagement with disability to activism and change. Like Mike Oliver, Carol Thomas has also taken the opportunity to draw together thoughts on theoretical ideas which are centrally important for strengthening the activist potential of our academic disability related work. She co-authored a short piece on the need for a stronger social model of disability with colleagues Maria Berghs, Karl Atkin and Chris Hatton. In a second short piece, constrained by the advancement of impairment, Carol looks back at the relevance of key concepts from her own work for ensuring disabled people the right to live a dignified and fulfilled life. These short pieces, the latter of necessity swiftly written, deepen understanding of the way in which in the minds of some of the journal’s greatest disabled scholars and activists, the power of our work for changing the actuality of disabled people’s everyday lives remains firmly fixed in alliances between the academy and activism.
Both Carol Thomas and Mike Oliver have been true to themselves in contributing these pieces to the Special Issue, right down to the last reflecting on disability, activism and the academy and constantly calling for renewal. Their contributions frame the articles which follow demonstrating just how important the central themes of the Special Issue are. We should be at the point where governments can bring into play social justice, equality and full inclusion of disabled people but instead, as all contributors point out, new routes to exclusion are constantly setting back the lives of disabled people highlighting the urgency of the calls for change.
Thuy Xuan Nguyen, Deborah Stienstra, Marnina Gonick, Huyen Do and Nhung Huynh point that renewal involves an obligation for more reflexive thinking about knowledge in disability studies than that which privileges particular ways of knowing from the Global North in their article on how critical disability studies might disrupt traditional research boundaries. Yuanyuan Qu and Nick Watson’s work on new technological arenas for disability activism in China describes unprecedented challenges for disability politics and disability activism shifting ideas about disability in a changing world. From knowledge about how autism and neurotypicality can be meaningfully (co)-produced, and made available both to the research community discussed by Marianthi Kourti, Hanna Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, David Jackson-Perry, Charlotte Brownlow, Kirsty Fletcher, Daniel Bendelman and Lindsay O’Dell, to questions about the position of parents of disabled children within the academy and activism in papers by Kelly Vaughan and Gia Super and Katherine Runswick-Cole and Sara Ryan, the articles in this issue reflect the breadth of questions in disability scholarship awaiting renewal, often through the lens of lived experience.
Sarah Carr draws on personal experience of being a mental health service user working in academia developing concepts of social capital and situated solidarity to develop strategic ideas for service user and survivor researchers with clear lessons for constructive learning. Alise de Bie develops insights into the challenges thrown up by the framing of Mad student experiences which leads to their abandonment as knowers and learners discussing the need for ways of buiding redress within the academy. Damian Mellifont, Jennifer Merry-Smith, Helen Dickinson, Gwynnyth Llewellyn, Shane Clifton, Jo Rogen, Martin Raffaele and Paul Williamson join others in a focus on the subject of ableism in this Special Issue which Ashley Taylor and Lauren Shallish extend to consideration of historically racist and ableist meanings of merit in the context of higher education. Cathy Vaughan, Karah Khaw, Georgia Katsikis, Jacinta Wheeler, Jasmine Ozge, Vasiliky Kasidis and Lila Moosad use the imagery of ‘like being put through a blender’ to convey inclusion in an Australian university and share analysis of contemporary shortcomings in their analysis of the need for renewal of understanding for future practice.
How disability researchers can build research to enhance its academic and activist power is a question that is also asked in this issue. Anne-Marie Callus reveals a keen eye for honest and open reflection on the dilemmas of being an inclusive researcher. After many years of doing participatory action research, this topic is also developed in papers by Wendy Bryant, Kevin Cordingly, Ellen Adomako and Mary Birken on making research and activism a participatory process. Jan Walmsley, Alan Armstrong, Anne Collis, Bryan Collis, Mal Cansdale and Simon Rice share insights into the personal and practical challenges of co-production encountered in their efforts to carry out good-quality research that will make big differences to disabled people’s lives. The final paper in the Special Issue written with Colin Cameron and Ann Nutt gives a taster of the efforts made by service users to inject a mix of experience and academic expertise into disability research making plain that ethical, practical and political barriers to inclusive research need to be revisited if disability research is to span the divide between the academy and activism, seen as integral by all of the Special Issue contributors, to the expansion of disabled people’s entitlements and opportunities.
This collection offers a rich resource for appraisal of the current state of disability, activism and the academy showing immensely strong commitment to renewal of core values and ideas that have historically been central to Disability & Society. All of the articles, whether concerned with new global challenges, lessons from local settings, institutional or governmental policies and practices being actively promoted today, or personal experience, are highly relevant in this year in which the legacy of Professor Michael Oliver and his firm belief in the power of disability, activism and the power of the academy achievable though the volumes of this journal compels us to be focussed on change and always forward looking.
Executive Editors found submissions for this Special Issue of broad interest, nuanced and compelling. Due to an unprecedented volume of strong papers we are delighted to publish a double Special Issue across two volumes of the journal, providing space for contributors to explore disability, activism and the academy in a wide variety of ways. We are delighted that Disability & Society remains the world-leading exponent of debate concerning disability, activism and the academy, including the importance of the voices of disabled people in shaping the future. We hope our readers find this collection useful for the future of disability studies.
Resource
Professor Mike Oliver shares thoughts on his experience of disability, activism and the academy in this documentary film made in 2018 by the University of Kent:
Kicking Down the Doors: from Borstal Boy to University Professor
Editor, Disability & Society