Support for and by disabled staff in the university
Sharing the work being undertaken by disabled academics and professional services colleagues in the academy
NADSN published there Towards a fully inclusive environment for disabled people in STEMM: A NADSN White Paper in March 2025. This ground-breaking paper was launched on 17th September at the Wellcome Trust offices in London. The paper outlines a number of urgent recommendations for universities to ensure that the full potential of disabled people are realised in the STEMM subject. NADSN has many resources on their website. This includes materials from a number of conferences - bringing together disabled academics and professional series colleagues - and can find details here - and given many presentations and produced various materials: NADSN conference 2024, presentations, literature, NADSN Conference held pre-covid in Manchester in 2019, NADSN’s post-lockdown position paper while NADSN members have also been involved in this fabulous film and project Marginalisation in Science: Disabilty and Inclusion
NADSN has also collaborated with colleagues at the Berkeley Centre (University of Queensland) delivered in October 2025 Making Universities more inclusive for Staff with Disabilities - check out the flyer here and website here
Members of the WAARC team are working in collaboration with National Association of Disabled Staff Networks to realise their aspirations in relation to two wider community projects that seek to enhance the work experiences of disabled academics and professional services colleagues:
RIDE Higher (Realising the Inclusion of Disabled Staff) is an initiative established by and for disabled staff in Higher Education - which feeds directly upon the activities of the Cross-cutting theme led by Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril.
Access to Work Users Sub-Group - led by Armineh Soorenian - This NADSN subgroup is for Disabled staff who receive Access to Work (AtW) support, such as Support Workers, equipment, or assistive tech. It offers monthly peer support meetings and will contribute to NADSN’s response to the UK Government’s AtW consultation. This work has come directly out of Armineh and Kirsty Liddiard's work on WAARC's Priority Area 1: Environments.

iHuman
How we understand being ‘human’ differs between disciplines and has changed radically over time. We are living in an age marked by rapid growth in knowledge about the human body and brain, and new technologies with the potential to change them.