Disability Studies MA

22/04/2026

Attention Disability Studies MA students, past, present, and future! You are especially welcome to join us for this free event:

New Beginnings in Culture and Disability Studies:
A Multiple Launch Event

5 June, 2026, Liverpool Hope University

10am-4.30pm, EDEN Arbour Room, EDEN Building, Childwall Campus


This year marks new beginnings for Saul Leslie’s debut novel, A Working Title I Want to Change, and Dr Liam Owens’s Disability Sport MA, as well as Prof David Bolt’s monograph, The Playground Model of Disability; edited volume, Cultural Stations of Disability; and Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies.

On culture and disability studies, there will be a dozen presentations across the day, including CCDS core members Dr Erin Pritchard, Dr Leah Burch, and Dr Emma Swai, and special guests such as our Vice Chancellor, Prof Penny Haughan, Dr Owen Barden (Trinity College Dublin), Dr Maryam Farahani (University of Liverpool), Dr Felipe Moreira (University of Leicester), Dr Alison Wilde (Northumbria University), and Dr Nina Michelle Worthington (Canterbury Church Christ University).

To attend the free event it is necessary to book via our online store:
https://store.hope.ac.uk/product-catalogue/faculty-of-education-and-social-sciences/school-of-social-sciences/events/new-beginnings-in-culture-and-disability-studies-a-multiple-launch-event

This is a face-to-face event but we hope to record and share it via the CCDS YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/

22/04/2026

Interrogating the ethics of visual methods: A critical disability studies critique of photovoice by Danielle Kohfeldt, David Bolt, and Robert Majzler.

Photovoice is widely regarded as a critical participatory method that promotes social change by centering the visual narratives of marginalized communities. This paper offers a methodological and epistemological critique of photovoice grounded in critical disability studies, examining the ethical tensions that arise from its reliance on visibility as a pathway to recognition and social change. Drawing on the concept of ocularnormativity, we argue that photovoice reproduces dominant hierarchies of knowledge by relying on a postpositivist epistemology that equates visual imagery with legitimacy, and by relying on visual tropes of dysfunction, decay, and debility to signify harm. These tropes rely on disability aesthetics to make oppression legible to a wider audience, but with ethical consequences rarely acknowledged in the literature. Using cripistemology as a guiding framework, we interrogate how photovoice, as a participatory visual method, risks reinscribing ableist ideologies. Rather than simply reform the method, we ask researchers to imagine how cripping photovoice may better align the method with the aims of disability justice. This paper contributes to ongoing conversations about the ethics of representation and accessibility in qualitative research.

It is now freely available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590260126000275?via%3Dihub

16/04/2026

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies: Now Live

With Prof David Bolt as Editor-in-Chief, alongside an international gathering of Area Editors, as well as a dedicated team at Oxford University Press, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies has now gone live.

This encyclopedia provides current, peer-reviewed, trustworthy articles. It opens with 60 extended articles, including 5 that are open access.

Access the content here:

Abstract. Disability can be thought of as the most universal of all identities. Whatever our gender, race, religion, nationality, class, or sexuality, we m

30/03/2026

Top 10 Most Popular CCDS YouTube Films

1. Robert McRuer, “Crip Times,” 4,875 views, posted 1 Sep. 2017.
2. Owen Barden, “Posthumanism and Disability,” 3,784 views, posted 20 Mar. 2020.
3. Michael Stokes, “All You Zombies,” 2,328 views, posted 4 Oct. 2017.
4. Ella Houston, “The Representation of Disabled Women in Anglo American Advertising,” 2,270 views, posted 25 Oct. 2019.
5. Peter Beresford, “From Psychiatry to Disability Studies and Mad Studies,” 1,865 views, posted 2 Jul. 2015.
6. Lennard J. Davis, “Sorrowless Lamentation,” 1,633 views, posted 22 Nov. 2017.
7. Lennard J. Davis, “The Stories We Tell: The Americans with Disabilities Act After 25 Years,” 1,625 views, posted 6 May 2015.
8. Erin Pritchard, “The Social and Spatial Experiences of Dwarfs in Public Spaces,” 1,441 views, posted 14 Feb. 2020.
9. David Bolt, “Cultural Disability Studies in Education,” 1,060 views, posted 25 Jul. 2018.
10. Margaret Price, “An Unstable and Fantastical Space of Absence,” 982 views, posted 15 Dec. 2016.

These videos and many more are available on the CCDS YouTube channel. The popularity report is correct on 27 March 2026.

25/03/2026

New Beginnings in Culture and Disability Studies:
A Multiple Launch Event

5 June, 2026, Liverpool Hope University

10am-4.30pm, EDEN Arbour Room, EDEN Building, Childwall Campus

The Centre for Culture and Disability Studies (CCDS) invites you to attend the 2026 multiple launch event.

This year marks new beginnings for Saul Leslie’s debut novel, A Working Title I Want to Change, and Dr Liam Owens’s Disability Sport MA, as well as Prof David Bolt’s monograph, The Playground Model of Disability; edited volume, Cultural Stations of Disability; and Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies.

On culture and disability studies, there will be a dozen presentations across the day, including CCDS core members Dr Erin Pritchard, Dr Leah Burch, and Dr Emma Swai, and special guests such as Dr Owen Barden (Trinity College Dublin), Dr Maryam Farahani (University of Liverpool), Dr Felipe Moreira (University of Leicester), Dr Alison Wilde (Northumbria University), and Dr Nina Michelle Worthington (Canterbury Church Christ University).

To attend the free event it is necessary to book via our online store:
https://store.hope.ac.uk/product-catalogue/faculty-of-education-and-social-sciences/school-of-social-sciences/events/new-beginnings-in-culture-and-disability-studies-a-multiple-launch-event

This is a face-to-face event but we hope to record and share it via the CCDS YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/

30/01/2026

LUP have made an issue of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies free to access. I am proud to say that JLCDS is in its 20th volume, so I am sure you will enjoy reading this excellent general issue:

The article examines how resonance has anchored deaf self-representation in the eighteenth century and the present. Through an interdisciplinary framework that foregrounds Deaf and sound studies in the context of the eighteenth century, the article ...

26/01/2026

Congratulations to our Disability Studies MA students who graduated on Thursday!

08/12/2025

Celebrating the publication of a new edited book, Cultural Stations of Disability: A Moment in Discourse, and enjoying a drink in the local pub.

01/12/2025

Cultural Stations of Disability: A Moment in Discourse

New book available in hardback, softback, and electronic formats

In the disability community, which can have multiple meanings in itself, we often experience poignant moments in sociocultural discourse. Our pathways to knowledge and understanding of identity are defined by life’s landmarks, many of which resonate with what thereby become formative figures or artefacts. This mapping of key moments involves recognising, and reflecting upon, cultural stations of disability.

David Bolt, Volume and Series Editor: “In the main, the 24 contributors write from lived experience of disability, most of which is direct. Academically, the authors range from postgraduates to full professors. Some are new to me, while many have already published in Autocritical Disability Studies, Literary Disability Studies, and/or JLCDS. Some have been my students at undergraduate, postgraduate, and/or doctoral levels, while some are colleagues whom I have been lucky enough to mentor. When it comes to the authors of the afterword, however, I anticipate no argument with my postulation that they, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and Georgina Kleege, are mentors to us all.”

Valid until the end of the year, the 30% Routledge discount code is ADC25

For more information and to order a copy: https://www.routledge.com/Cultural-Stations-of-Disability-A-Moment-in-Discourse/Bolt/p/book/9781032870984

This edited volume is part of the Autocritical Disability Studies book series.

In the disability community, which can have multiple meanings in itself, we often experience poignant moments in sociocultural discourse. Our pathways to knowledge and understanding of identity are defined by life’s landmarks, many of which resonate with what thereby become formative figures or ar...

18/11/2025

Damien Maguire, Associate Dean of External Engagement, interviews David Bolt as Professor of Disability Studies and Interdisciplinarity at Liverpool Hope University. One focus of the conversation is the Disability Studies MA that was launched in 2013 and enrolls students in January and September.

Damien Maguire, Associate Dean of External Engagement, interviews David Bolt as Professor of Disability Studies and Interdisciplinarity at Liverpool Hope Uni...

05/11/2025

Cultural Stations of Disability: A Moment in Discourse

Now available to pre-order with discount, new book edited by David Bolt, including an afterword by Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and Georgina Kleege.

In the disability community, which can have multiple meanings in itself, we often experience poignant moments in sociocultural discourse. Our pathways to knowledge and understanding of identity are defined by life’s landmarks, many of which resonate with what thereby become formative figures or artefacts. This mapping of key moments involves recognising, and reflecting upon, cultural stations of disability.

More than being demarcations of disruption to the normative social order, cultural stations of disability sometimes pertain to its very epitome. They hold something of a moment in discourse with which identification is paramount but variously emotive. They may capture feelings of liberation to which we joyfully return, difficult memories that we revisit to ponder, or the nadir of modernity from which we can only hope to learn.

In this new edited volume, the international gathering of contributors finds and defines dozens of cultural stations of disability in music, art, film, television programs, literature, sitcom, activism, sport, performance, organisations, places, and events.

Valid until the end of the year, the 30% Routledge discount code is: ADC25

For more information and to order a copy: https://www.routledge.com/Cultural-Stations-of-Disability-A-Moment-in-Discourse/Bolt/p/book/9781032870984

This edited volume is part of the Autocritical Disability Studies book series.

In the disability community, which can have multiple meanings in itself, we often experience poignant moments in sociocultural discourse. Our pathways to knowledge and understanding of identity are defined by life’s landmarks, many of which resonate with what thereby become formative figures or ar...

16/09/2025

Disability Studies MA

Programme Leader, Prof David Bolt.

This programme is face to face, full-time or part-time, and available to September and February starters.

The programme is aligned with the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies and taught by tutors in the Faculty of Education and Social Science, Liverpool Hope University.

Disability Studies is a relatively new but rapidly growing academic discipline, as illustrated by the international proliferation of courses, events, networks, journals, book series, monographs, and edited collections. Though drawing on this progress substantially, the Disability Studies MA at Liverpool Hope University differs from similar programmes insofar as it places particular emphasis on cultural issues. We are not only interested in the policies, prejudices, and professions around disability, but also its representation in literature, media, film, art, and so on.

Liverpool Hope University is well suited as a host for this programme. The regional, national, and international profile of the programme is enhanced greatly by the Centre for Culture & Disability Studies–and, by extension, the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, the seminars and conferences, the YouTube channel, the Literary Disability Studies book series, the Autocritical Disability Studies book series, the Cultural History of Disability multi-volume project, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies, and an enthusiastic team of widely-published tutors.

The modules included are Critical Disability Theory; Disability and Professional Practice; Modelling Disability; Disability and Disciplines; Research Methods; and a Dissertation.

The taught elements of the course include, for full-time students, two evenings per week (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-9pm), and for part-time students, one evening per week. These classes are held at Hope Park.

For information on how to apply:

Disability Studies is a relatively new but rapidly growing academic discipline, as illustrated by the international proliferation of courses, events, networks, journals, book series, monographs, edited collections, and so on.