Simo Vehmas, Professor of Special Education, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, President of NNDR In this blog entry, I will discuss very briefly two related and controversial questions that, in my view, arise from the neurodiversity perspective: first, whether neurodiversity has…
Philippa Rieck, PhD researcher, Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research, University of Glasgow, UK Channel 4 in the UK has currently been running the very popular ‘One Born Every Minute’ which attempts to show the ‘real life drama’ that occurs in…
Bjarne Bjelke Jensen, Consultant, The National Resource Centre on Disability and Social Psychiatry, Denmark On February 9th 2012, a rather unique event took place in Denmark. The Danish “Resource Centre on Disability and Social Psychiatry” arranged a conference on knowledge arenas…
Magnus Tideman, Professor of disability research, University of Halmstad, Sweden The changes that have taken place for persons with intellectual disabilities in Sweden from the beginning of the 1990s until today are characterised by a number of clear trends. Institutional…
Gregor Wolbring, Associate professor, Dept. of Community Health Sciences, Program in Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, University of Calgary, Canada, Email: gwolbrin@ucalgary.ca As I see it, the theoretical framework and analytical lens of Ableism is a gift from the disabled people rights movement…
Jackie Leach Scully, Reader in Social Ethics and Bioethics, Newcastle University, UK Conversations among disabled people in Britain these days circle round and round one topic: the government and what it is doing to us. And those conversations are full…
Dr. phil. Dóra S. Bjarnason, professor. School of Education, The University of Iceland e-mail dsb@hi.is I have never fitted comfortably into a “creed” or “-ism” even though I have tried at different points in my life. I was never a…
Jan Grue, Research Fellow, Oslo University College, Norway In the wake of the July 22 killings in Oslo and on Utøya, the public debate in Norway has to some extent, and quite regrettably, shifted from declarations of unity and tolerance…
Alan Roulstone, Professor of Disability and Inclusion, University of Northumbria, UK It was recently announced that Vic Finkelstein, veteran disability activist and academic had sadly passed away. Vic Finkelstein was born in Johannesburg in 1938 and was part of the…
Kristín Björnsdóttir, Assistant Professor, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland A few weeks ago, I stood in front of a large group of undergraduate students at the University of Iceland. ‘My brother is a retard,’ I said. The students stopped browsing…