Future Perfect – Future Imperfect? is an e-book that links to the D4D project. The brief for contributions to this publication asked for projections into the future. What will the future look like for disabled people? How will we think of disability in the context of posthuman thinking and scientific advances that will enable us to create human / technology hybrids?
Steph Harvey recently completed a research PhD in Disability and Cultural Studies at Bath Spa University, linked to the D4D project. Harvey spoke to Natasha Sutton Williams about the disconnect between how disability is discussed by academics and policy-makers compared to the lived experience of people with long-term mental health conditions from cross-cultural backgrounds.
Sue Moffat is the Director of New Vic Theatre and a Research Fellow at Keele University. As part of her work she manages New Vic Borderlines – the theatre’s award-winning outreach department, which responds directly to the needs of the local community, and to national and global issues that have an impact on ordinary people’s lives. As a theatre director, Moffat’s work focuses on collaborating with individuals, groups and communities who exist on ‘the borders’ and are marginalised for various reasons. Natasha Sutton Williams spoke to Moffat about her role as community co-investigator for the D4D project, her cultural animation workshops, and collaborations with researchers across D4D’s workstreams.
Andy Auld is a researcher working on a PhD in Disability and Cultural Studies at Bath Spa University. With a background in Cultural Studies and…
Agnes (Aggie) Bezzina is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work with Adults at the University of Bristol. She has 18 years’ experience of social work practice, research and education in mental health and disability. Her research highlights the wealth of cultural, historical, social and illness-specific service-user knowledge in order to educate health-care and social-care practitioners. Natasha Sutton Williams spoke to her about the joys and challenges of leading the D4D workstream Performing Inclusion and Community.
Dr Lucy Burke is a Principal Lecturer for the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University. She identifies as disabled and teaches literary and cultural disability studies, critical medical humanities, critical and cultural theory, and contemporary literature and film. Her primary area of research explores cultural responses to dementia and representations of learning disability in contemporary society. Natasha Sutton Williams spoke to Burke about ableism, scholar activism and her D4D project stream Now You See Us.
Martin Levinson is Professor of Cultural Identities at Bath Spa University. He works in Educational Anthropology, and his research centres around minority, marginalised and disadvantaged groups. As Principal Investigator on the D4D project, he is responsible for co-ordination across the different workstreams. Natasha Sutton Williams chatted to him about his ethnographic research, genetic screening, and changing perceptions around disability.
Natasha Sutton Williams speaks to novelist, film-maker and photographer, Tanvir Bush to discuss her input into the D4D research project: Brave New World, her dystopian disability-led novel Cull and the creative freedom of sensory photography.
A key outcome of the Electric Bodies project has been the production of edited versions of the full length transcription poetry cycles giving a snapshot…
Natasha Sutton Williams speaks to visual artist Esther Fox about her D4D research project: Institutionalised, Homogenised, Vaporised engages with past, present and future perspectives from the disabled community.
