Blog: Insider or outsider? Positionality and doing oral history as a disabled historian
My respondent told me about Gerrie while we sat at her dining table, the May sun shining abundantly outside. The wedding of Gerrie’s favourite brother was coming up, so she had come to the Sewing Ring for a tailor-made outfit. Gerrie and my respondent customised her lurex stockings and made a high waist dress that […]
Blog: Schools locked down, kids locked out? – Researching barriers facing disabled students during the pandemic
To the visitor who enters my sister’s school, it is immediately clear that things are done a little differently here. Across the main entrance, a flock of walkers, wheelchairs and other devices awaits their owners, not unlike bikes in front of other schools. You might be approached by a curious student who, using a communication […]
Blog: What the pandemic has taught me, a hopeless foodie, about belonging to a community
Since March of 2020, government press conferences have been broadcast into our homes, at intervals ranging from about once every two weeks to every couple of months, when the situation was more stable. Often, when gathering around our TVs to hear what our government had in store for us, there would always be one measure […]
Health is a medical issue, right? The current covid-19 pandemic demonstrates that our wellbeing is not just the territory of doctors. “Health” does not only have to do with the absence of illness, but just as much with spiritual and public health. The short podcast series accompanying the research project ‘We have never been secular’ […]
In the debates about the question of how to handle the Covid-19 pandemic religious coping strategies barely receive attention. However, in some fierce debates religion does play a remarkable role. Research about so-called social influencers for instance shows how their critical stance towards strict government measures is inspired by spiritual gurus. This project aims to […]
In deze korte interview serie worden verschillende Nederlandse decanen aan het woord gelaten over de veranderingen met betrekking tot studeren met een functiebeperking die zij hebben zien plaatsvinden in hun werk als decaan. In dit tweede interview Hermien Moning van NHL Stenden Hogeschool in Leeuwarden.
Last Friday Google Doodle paid tribute to the legacy of Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865), the Hungarian obstetrician who first discovered that handwashing can have a life-saving effect.
My story of the UN year of the disabled takes place in Britain. I was fifteen years old and attending Bishop Wand Church of England secondary school in the quiet west of London town of Sunbury-on-Thames. [..]
British Jews and the United Nations International Year of Disabled People in 1981
In the 17th October 1980 issue of the Jewish Chronicle, a letter from a female, wheelchair-using Jewish member of the Multiple Sclerosis Society detailed her difficulties attending synagogue during Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. Upon arrival at the Egerton Road Synagogue, she and her husband found no way for her to access the women’s portion of the prayer chamber. [..]