Members of the WAARC team presented at this community event in London 18 - 19th March 2026 held at the Wellcome Trust, London. Facilitated by Studio Susegad and Wellcome, this hybrid event brought together colleagues from across EDI, research culture, funding, NGO, DPO and universities communities. In addition, emerging findings from project teams funded by Wellcome’s Institutional Funding for Research Culture.
Kirsty Liddiard, Antonios Ktenidis and Dan Goodley attended in person while Armineh Soorenian, Nikita Hayden, Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril, Sophie Phillips and Lauren White participated online. WAARC was well-represented at this event through three sessions:
Lightning Talk - What makes an anti-ableist university? Lauren White and Dan Goodley
Online facilitated conversation - Creating Digital Third Spaces-Élaina Gauthier - Mamaril and Antonios Ktenidis – University of Sheffield
Research carousel - Antonios shared a chosen object/image to (card linking to our WAARC website and Podcast series) - to prompt discussion.
These different modes of presentation afforded various opportunities to share our key findings but also to enrich our conversations. Some of the key messages and conversations from our different sessions including the following:
- Recognising disability as the ultimate intersectional subject.
- Celebrating disability as the lever for institutional change.
- Maintaining momentum of our work beyond the timeframe of our project.
- Acknowledging the challenges of the contemporary moment defined by a push-back against many EDI initiatives and discourses.
- Recognising disability and neurodivergence are more prominent than ever.
- Finding moments when ableism is left untroubled in spaces of research culture.
- Calling out able-bodied-and-mindness as assumed and valued.
- Importance of senior leadership buy-in to projects.
- Imagining and defining future success and legacy is a priority.
- Different formats and media as key to knowledge exchange.
- Contesting simplistic representations of disability.
- Revising the Researcher Concordat through a centering of disability.
- Unpacking what we mean by ableism.
- Highlighting the cliff edge that disabled colleagues experience when they move from student to staff status.
- Urgency around the need to challenge the Access to Work crisis in the HEI sector.
- Encouraging disclosures of disability when university culture is supportive.
- Giving more time for career development to researchers on contracts.
