Support for and by disabled staff in the university

NADSN

NADSN published their 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 2025 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 given many presentations and produced various materials: 

You can find some of NADSN's resources in the links below:

• 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

WAARC working with NADSN

• 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.

• Liz Dew and Armineh Soorenian were invited by the University of Leeds to present a keynote address - Reimagining Research Culture, Together - at the Research Culture Community of Practice Event 2025 (Leeds, 14th July 2025). In this paper the significant contributions of professional services colleagues to the promotion of positive research culture is highlighted and these contributions are taken further in this paper by Liz in collaboration with colleagues Rhea and Lucy Dunning in their popular recent paper presented as part of of the Disability Matters Online Symposia Series