This project is run by Marie Tidball, as part of the TORCH Knowledge Exchange Fellowship scheme.
In the context of Brexit, people with disabilities face huge social, legal and cultural change – from their access to the rest of Europe through the use of their Blue Badge to rights under the Social Chapter of the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam. Against this background of socio-political upheaval, the project Amplifying Inclusion: living disability narratives and law for the next generation asks people with disabilities about the role of their disability in their own identities and how disability should be represented in contemporary history. Grounded in these narratives and their lived experience of disability, it seeks their priorities for change to disability law and policy for the next 25 years. This multi-disciplinary knowledge exchange project will create a forum for people with disabilities to explore, investigate and intervene in the humanities, legal and policy discourses about understanding disability and its representation.
Intersectionality is central to this interdisciplinary research: documenting how other aspects of identity including class, race and gender, are represented in these narratives and priorities. The voices of contributors will be recorded throughout the research project to create an audio blog. This will be turned into an audio installation as part of the TORCH ‘Oxford Alternative Stories’ mobile app project. This will be a flagship project in creating cross-disciplinary dialogue between scholars in the Humanities, working on life narratives, emotions and ethics and those working in disability law and policy.
This project collaborates with the Disabled People's Organisations My Life, My Choice and Getting Heard Oxfordshire.