Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Professor Dan Goodley and Dr Kirsty Liddiard about the contributions of critical disability studies to the medical humanities, including the ‘absent presence’ of disability in medical humanities. Dan and Kirsty advocate for a paradigm shift that centres disability as the driving subject of inquiry and discuss proposed programmes of research, including ‘Disability Matters’ and ‘A new cultural politics of breathing’.

Prof Dan Goodley is Professor of Disability Studies and Education in the School of Education and co-director of iHuman; the interdisciplinary institute for the study of the human. Dan is interested in theorising and challenging the conditions of disablism (the social, political, cultural and psycho-emotional exclusion of people with physical, sensory and/or cognitive impairments) and ableism (the contemporary ideals on which the able, autonomous, productive citizen is based). He draws on ideas from critical psychology, medical sociology, medical humanities, philosophy, sociology and education.

Dr Kirsty Liddiard is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Education and theme co-leader in iHuman at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of The Intimate Lives of Disabled People (2018, Routledge) and co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies (2018, Palgrave) with Tillie Curran and Katherine Runswick-Cole. She is co-editor of Being Human in Covid-19 (2022, Bristol University Press) with Warren Pearce, Paul Martin and Stevie de Saille and a co-author of Living Life to the Fullest: Disability, Youth and Voice (2022, Emerald). Her research explores disability, childhood and youth. She tweets @kirstyliddiard1.