To mark Disability History Month (16th November to 16th December 2023) and International Day of Disabled People (3rd December 2023) we proudly acknowledge that Disability research at the University of Sheffield is thriving. In January 2024, Cripping Breath: Towards a new cultural politics of respiration, a new 5 year interdisciplinary programme of research funded by a Wellcome Trust Discovery Award led by Dr Kirsty Liddiard (School of Education and iHuman), will begin at the university.
Cripping Breath will explore new cultures of respiratory health through the expertise of those who have had their lives saved and sustained by ventilatory medical technologies. Respiratory failure is common in many health conditions, and is a symptom of Coronavirus. Our explorations, led by disabled, chronically ill and ventilated people, will do so in recognition that these growing communities of people and patients are often absent from contemporary social theorisations of breath and breathing, but also that their experiences have much to teach about living in cultures of compromised respiration.
Centring arts-informed, archival, narrative and ethnographic approaches, the project develops Crip perspectives - forms of knowledge production that emerge from lived experiences of disability and chronic illness. Artists-in-Residence, experts-by-experience, disability and arts organisations and clinicians will work in collaboration to curate and co-produce new understandings of the experiences of people living with respiratory illness, across a host of identity positions, to interrogate the new cultural politics of respiration and ventilation in a continuing global pandemic, and as we imagine post-pandemic futures.
Other live disability research projects in the School of Education include:
Disability Matters, a major new six year pan-national programme of disability, health and science research, funded by a Wellcome Trust Discretionary Award, led by Professor Dan Goodley (School of Education and iHuman) began September 2023. See here to learn more.
Tired of Spinning Plates? An exploration of the mental health of older carers/adults of people with learning disabilities (NIHR, HSDR): 1st October, 2022 - 31st December, 2024: a co-produced project with family carers of people with learning disabilities, the project is exploring the meanings of mental health and care, and of access services and support. See here to learn more.
Medication and my mental health: mental health medications in the lives of people with learning disabilities (NIHR, RfPB: Mental Health in the North) (February, 2022- March, 2024): a co-produced project about the use of mental health medications in the lives of people with learning disabilities.
What about me? People with learning disabilities on the margins of social care (NIHR, RfSC) (April, 2023 - February, 2025): a co-produced project exploring access to support for people with learning disabilities on the margins of social care. See here to learn more.
To learn more about Cripping Breath, please visit our website here.
Alternatively, you can follow us on X (formally Twitter) at @CrippingBreath