Scholarship

Leads: Christina Lee, Rhea Halsey and Dan Goodley (University of Sheffield) 

An easy read version of this page is available here, with thanks to Speakup Self-Advocacy.

[The images from the easy read documents are licenced. Please do not duplicate or reuse the Photosymbols unless you have a licence to do so.]

We are holding a number of Online Symposia over the six years of the programme, inviting an international mix of disability activists, established and emerging health and disability scholars from a host disciplines.  All papers are collated and presentations are recorded as part our Disability Matters Scholarship collection. 

We help curate Disability Dialogues which seeks to showcase the work of emerging disability studies scholars.

Two multi-day International Conferences will be hosted in Year 3 (Singapore, ‘Disability matters in health research’) and Year 6 (Sheffield, ‘Disability futures in health research’) with an emphasis on the participation of early career researchers. 

A minimum of four journal articles will be written capturing the intellectual themes of our symposia, publications and conferences to engage an interdisciplinary audience (in medicine, social sciences, healthcare research).

If you have other specific access needs or have further questions about access, please contact us. To receive updates for upcoming online symposia and other events, sign up to our mailing list.

Online symposia

Between 2023 and 2029, we are running a number of short and accessible online symposia. We are inviting people to write a short provocative piece (no more than 1000 words) that they will then present online for ten minutes.

Online symposia event will last no more than 1 hour 30 minutes. Automatic live captioning will be used to facilitate the event and written copies of the speaker’s talks will be made available before the session.

A Zoom meeting link will be shared via email ahead of the event. Attendees are welcome to join or leave the event at any time. Participating in the Q&A and discussion is optional. A recording of the talk will be available after the event. You can find video recordings and papers from past symposia here.

International conference

Disability Matters Together: International Conference 2026

On 28th September to 1st October 2026, Disability Matters held the first international conference in Singapore at the Enabling Village. We thank Ms Lee May Gee, CEO of SG Enable, who supported our event and was the Guest of Honour at the conference. The conference brought together members of our programme team: that is our Disabled People's Organisations, our Investigators, Researchers and other esteemed colleagues and friends across five countries, Singapore, India, Australia, Canada and the UK.  Over the four days,  we shared updates, stories, and creative writings together, and explored questions about access and inclusion in research and advocacy. Designed with comfort and care at its core, the conference was an opportunity to build connection, community, care and joy, and reimagine what a "conference" event can be through a disability lens.

Our filmmaker Joanna Tobbell and cinematographer Chris were also present to capture the conversations at the conference and we are grateful for their work for the event. 

In the coming months, we will be sharing a number of outputs from the conference, including papers, photos, films, and reflections. Find out more about the event here.