Embodied Selves in Transition: Disabled Young Bodies

Project Dates: From March 2011 to February 2013

Project Leader: Dr. Janice McLaughlin – Geography, Politics and Sociology

Staff: Prof. Allan Colver (Institute of Health & Society), Prof. Patrick Olivier (CIs), Gavin Wood, Dan Jackson, Dr. Cass Ladha, Dr. Jayne Wallace, Dr. Edmund Coleman-Fountain, Dr. Abigail Durrant – Geography, Politics and Sociology.

Sponsors: ESRC

 

The project will explore the embodied selves of disabled young people. Its focus will be on how they create meaning from and via their bodies; how the body plays a role in their engagement with the social and material world; and how embodiment is influenced by their social transition into adolescence. A particular aspect of the work will consider how they define, understand and manage pain.

The project will involve a variety of methods which will bring together digital and textual data and modes of analysis. The approach of the research will be influenced by a research panel of disabled young people who will help develop the methodology and analysis.