September 2000 - August 2001
August 2001
Congratulations to Alison Sheldon who successfully defended her doctoral thesis on communication technologies and disabled people. Alison is currently revising and developing distance learning materials for the MA in Disability Studies.
A quiet month and a well earned holiday for most of us.
July 2001
Two new research reports are now available online. The first is from a project concerning advocacy services for children with communication impairments. The second concerns the evaluation of pilot schemes for school inclusion. These links take you to the project summary pages where you can download the reports in PDF format.
Many congratulations to those of our students who graduated this month.
June 2001
This month sees publication of a new book edited by Mark Priestley, featuring contributions from 13 different countries, under the title Disability and the Life Course: global perspectives (Cambridge University Press)
Debbie Phillips, Elly Macha, Momin Moh and Mark Priestley all attended the Society for Disability Studies conference in Winnipeg (Canada).
Visitors to the Centre this month included representatives of the UK Disability Rights Commission.
May 2001
The Stage Two report from the 'Creating Independent Futures' project has now been published.
The final report of the 'Self-advocacy, Civil Rights and Social Model of Disability' project is also now available online.
April 2001
Colin Barnes and Momin Moh travelled to Norway for the World Health Organisation invitational conference on 'Rethinking Care'.
First Key (the National Leaving Care Advisory Service) hosted the national launch of the 'Whatever Next?' report from research with young disabled people leaving care. Speakers included Professor Mike Stein (University of York) and Simone Aspis (Changing Perspectives). Copies of the report are now available (see project page for details).
Rob Evans (Manchester Metropolitan University) gave the latest visiting lecture in our New Directions seminar series under the title 'Deconstructing Tourette's Syndrome: Reclaiming Lives from Labels'.
March 2001
Parvaneh Rabiee and Mark Priestley begin a new project to examine the representation of claims by older and disabled people in the context of contemporary British social policy. More details are available on the project page
Visitors this month included Hannu Mahonen, who gave a presentation on "Organisations of Disabled People in Finland".
February 2001
This month saw two guest lecturers in our public seminar series. Vic Finkelstein presented 'A personal journey into disability politics', and Mairian Corker gave a paper entitled 'Thinking about difference'. We hope to make transcripts availabel online.
January 2001
Colin Barnes travelled to the Norwegian Council on Disability (Oslo) for discussions on the forthcoming World Health Organisation conference on 'Rethinking Care'.
Congratulations to Mark Priestley and Parvaneh Rabiee, who were awarded an ESRC grant for a short project on disability and old age. More details on these pages in March.
December 2000
Seasons greetings to all our friends and supporters, and best wishes for a peaceful new millenium.
Congratulations to all those who graduated from Leeds this month with an MA or Diploma in Disability Studies. Well done and good luck for the future.
Elly Macha travelled to Australia, to present a paper on her research with disabled women in Tanzania.
November 2000
Welcome to Sonali Shah, who joins the CDS this month, to begin work on research for the Leeds Inclusion Project and Leeds Health Authority on access to health care for black and minority ethnic disabled people.
Mark Priestley travelled to Oslo (Norway) to present a seminar discussion on 'Emancipatory Research' for NOVA (Norsk institutt for forskning om oppvekst, velferd og aldring). Mark also gave this month's guest lecture in our New Directions series entitled, "Disability and Childhood".
October 2000
A big welcome to all our new taught students (60 undergraduate, 35 Masters). Welcome also to Bill Armer, who begins work on his PhD thesis, and welcome back to Elly Macha, who returns from her fieldwork in Tanzania.
Parvaneh Rabiee and Mark Priestley start a new project this month, developing evaluation tools for the inclusion of special school pupils in mainstream education. More details will be available here.
Visitors to the Centre included Andrew Azzopardi (Malta), and Rachel Hurst of Disability Awareness in Action, who gave a public lecture on the 'International Disability Rights Movement' (full text available).
September 2000
Congratualations to Ayesha Vernon, who leaves the DRU this month to take up a lectureship at the University of Northumberland. We wish her well.
Good luck also to AKM Momin, who leaves for three months fieldwork in Bangladesh.
Mark Priestley represented the DRU at the inaugaral meeting of the new European Network on Disability Studies, in Blankenberge (Belgium).