In many sectors, conversations around Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) are common, but often the specific challenges and experiences of disabled people are overlooked.

Professor Dan Goodley and Professor Rebecca Lawthom lead the Wellcome Anti-Ableist Research Culture (WAARC) project at the University of Sheffield. This groundbreaking initiative isn’t just seeking to accommodate disability; it’s working to fundamentally reimagine and re-create an academic environment that actively values disability as a source of creativity, critical insight and collective strength.

In this interview, Dan and Rebecca dive into the project’s mission, address the difficulties of changing culture in universities, and how others can get involved in building inclusive environments for disabled people.

Could you start by explaining the core mission of the WAARC project in simple terms for a non-specialist audience? What is “anti-ableism” in the context of academic research, and why is this work so critical right now?

This project has a very practical core mission: to improve the research culture of universities with specific reference to disabled researchers and disabled professional services colleagues. We assert that more inclusive cultures are anti-ableist by design. To understand anti-ableism we need to get our heads around ableism.

Ableism is a taken-for-granted idea – often a hidden assumption – that is endemic within society and oftentimes found in the university. We often come across university mission statements that seek to attract some of the world’s ‘brightest and best’. Universities are effectively elite institutions, often shaped by ableist ideas and ideals.

The problem with ableism is that it priorities ability – or able-bodied-and-mindedness – over other human characteristics. And ableism often promotes the notion that abilities are innate: you are either born able or not. Ableism equates being able with being a valued human being. Ability is often understood as an individual disposition; a quality held by an individual person. Ableism feeds the neoliberal belief that each individual human being has the capacity and resources to progress through life; as long as we put in the effort. Ableism’s emphasis on the individual ignores the fact that we are all social beings. We need each other. We are who we are because of our interdependent relationships with others. Ableism forgets these realities. Ableism assumes that each of us is (or should be) able-bodied-and-minded; flattening differences between us. But, we know we are all impacted by our differential relationships with class, nation, race, gender, sexuality, age and of course disability.

The truth is that some of us are better placed than others to fit the ableist imperative. Some of us hold forms of ability privilege and others do not: a reflection of wider social inequalities.

So anti-ableism confronts these stories of sameness – these troubling assumptions, taken for granted ideas and commonsensical values associated with ability – and asks instead: how might we recover our human differences as resources to make the university a better place for all? How might we reconnect with one another? How might we harness our interdependencies with others in the university?

Anti-ableist practice starts with ability’s antonym; disability. We want to rethink the university by sitting with the promise of disability.

WAARC seeks to develop anti-ableist ideas and practices by working with the idea that disability is an opportunity, a possibility, a new way of thinking about the university.

We do not assume that able-bodied-and-mindedness is always present. We start with disability as the driving subject for rethinking, redesigning and recreating the university: with a specific focus on the experiences of disabled researchers and professional services colleagues who are key parts of our university research cultures. Anti-ableism is also a provocative term: it desires a university where we value more than just ability. Anti-ableist work is often developed in conversations with anti-sexist, anti-colonial, anti-heterosexist and anti-racist practices. And most significantly anti-ableism learns from and collaborates with the politics of disability developed by disabled people.

The project is divided into three priority areas: Environment, Development, and Collaborative inquiry. Could you tell us more about these areas and what you hope to achieve in each?

WAARC is a team effort and we are fortunate to have a very talented team of researchers (who carry out the everyday demands of each priority area/cross-cutting theme) and academic leads (colleagues who support researchers to meet their area/theme objectives).

Priority Area 1: Environment is led by Armineh Soorenian and Kirsty Liddiard who are experimenting with new ideas for inclusive recruitment and employment practices. They are asking what policies and practices might better bring disabled researchers into the university? When disabled researchers land in the university then what employment practices help keep disabled researchers in the university?

Priority Area 2: Development is producing new guidelines on accessible research events and delivering a new course on inclusive research methods to raise the capacities of postgraduate researchers and Early Career Researchers. This area is being led by Lauren White alongside Daniel Jones (who has recently left the project to take up an exciting new opportunity at Durham University) and Nikita Hayden (who joins us from one of our sister projects Humanising Healthcare in October 2025). They are finding new forms of access that make university events better spaces to occupy for disabled (and non-disabled staff) while also capturing innovative methods for doing research with disabled people.

Sophie Phillips has been leading Priority Area 3: Collaboration, working with Dan, that puts disabled people front and centre of new projects that we have funded during the time of WAARC. Sophie led an open application call which eventually led to the funding of four Collaborative Projects that have brought together University of Sheffield researchers with disabled people’s organisations (DPO) to carry out small scale projects that reflect the interests of the DPOs. As we discuss below; our relationships with DPOs are a significant aspect of anti-ableist work.

We also have a cross-cutting theme where some of key findings and headlines are being brought together and reflected upon by Elaina Gauthier-Mamaril and Antonios Ktenidis. Our cross-cutters are not simply reflecting on findings of priority areas: they are also generating new ways of doing knowledge exchange; where we might debate, discuss and share our ideas about anti-ableism including a podcast series, arts exhibition and public events informed by the arts and activism.

All of us in the WAARC are being supported by senior colleagues in the University including Katherine Runswick-Cole, John Flint and Meera Warrier and Liz Dew who as Project Coordinator has got us to think more critically about the central involvement of our professional services colleagues who help create the support systems on which disabled and non-disabled researchers rely upon. We are fortunate that we are being joined by Elinor Noble as a new Project Manager in October 2025.

What was the initial spark that led to the creation of the WAARC project?

Some of the key ideas of WAARC can be found in the previous work of the WAARC team. Our researchers and project coordinator – Armineh, Daniel, Elaina, Liz, Nikita, Sophie – have all engaged in disability studies in some form or another for several years; whether this be through doctoral research or previous research and employment. Dan and Rebecca have been working with Antonios, Kirsty, Lauren and Katherine for a while now thinking together about the relationship between disability and the university. Over the last decade, the Critical Disability Studies has been writing and researching with disabled colleagues and collaborators in and outside of the university.

Our colleagues come from various disciplines including education, psychology, sociology, history, geography, childhood and youth, health, social policy, arts, humanities and cultural studies. We share a belief that critical disability studies should study and contest society’s exclusion of disabled people while simultaneously illuminating the ways in which disability always has the potential for us to reimagine the wider world and, specifically, the university. Recently, for example, we have been working up A Manifesto for Critical Disability Studies and Letters to Disability Studies. Our community enjoys an interdisciplinary and international reputation for critical disability studies.

When the call for proposals for Institutional Research Culture funding came from the Wellcome Trust – and Vice-Chancellors of a number of universities were approached to apply – our senior colleagues at the University of Sheffield chose to prioritise disability; bringing in the Critical Disability Studies and iHuman teams into the application process. Wellcome’s focus on research culture and our prior engagement with disability appeared to be perfectly matched because we wanted to explore further what disability brings to a reconsideration of positive, inclusive and welcoming research communities. We were delighted when it was announced that we were one of 24 institutions funded by the Wellcome Trust to research, develop and enhance research culture within their universities.

You are collaborating with disabled people’s organisations (DPOs). How does this co-productive approach influence the project’s direction and ensure its work is meaningful and impactful?

Our collaborations with DPOs is not only a core element of WAARC; collaboration guides, shapes and informs the aspirations and outcomes of the project. We are very lucky to work with the National Association of Disabled Staff Networks (NADSN), Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance, Sheffield Voices and Speakup Self-advocacy. And we acknowledge that their involvement has to be properly funded: which the Wellcome Trust also clearly supports.

By bringing in DPOs this permits us to simultaneously work in and outside of the University. We work inside the university – through our priority areas of environment, development and collaboration and cross-cutting themes – and we work outside of the university by drawing in the expertise of disabled researchers to inform our practice.

All of the members of the DPOs that we work with bring with them a wealth of experiences in terms of carrying out their own research and innovation. They collaborate with us in different ways ranging from co-delivering elements of the fieldwork, helping to analyse emerging data, offering advice on disability policy, auditing our work and helping to disseminate the findings. DPOs must be positioned as equal partners in the development of disability research in collaboration with universities. DPOs should be properly remunerated for their work, skillsets and expertise. University researchers and DPOs must be brought together to develop research projects that reflect the aspirations of both parties. It is important to recognise too that our DPO partners have developed their own work around promoting more inclusive research environments. NADSN, for example, has recently produced the NADSN White Paper: Towards a Fully Inclusive Environment for Disabled People in STEMM which is a ground-breaking document that informs and supports some of the emerging headlines from WAARC.

The project is focused on the University of Sheffield. What unique challenges or opportunities does a large institution like this present when trying to embed anti-ableist practices?

We are of the opinion that carrying out research in universities is often very challenging because universities are deeply bureaucratic entities and the University of Sheffield is no different. Turning research ideas into research practices is always challenging; not least when we spend so much time attending to questions of ethics and risk assessment; crafting the writing of contracts, intellectual property and participation agreements; dealing with complexities of procurement and invoicing; ensuring that the processing of payments meets the business needs of our partners while also adhering to financial regulations. We do get it: rules and procedures are there to be followed. However, we are finding that because universities are such large institutions they are often not the most agile.

For example, it takes on average six months for a new contractual agreement to be finalised between the university and a new disabled people’s organisation DPO. And we know from colleagues that this is a fairly standard timing for most universities. DPOs are fundamental to the delivery of collaborative research. And while our brilliant and committed contracts team are working at capacity to get the contracts signed and sealed, we find that DPOs are still waiting to be paid; which means the collaboration is delayed.

This unfortunate position – thinking more generally outside of WAARC – is especially not helpful when some non-academic partner organisations might be financially precarious. Hence, while we understand research collaborations with DPOs as an anti-ableist practice in its own right, we worry that embedding these kinds of collaborations in the university are endangered by the deep bureaucracy of universities.

In short, we might ask: is the university fit for purpose for co-production research? We think the answer is yes but all of us in the university desire more streamlined processes that make working with DPOs a much smoother process. This is an issue for the wider university sector: and an urgent one especially when universities have explicit civic ambitions to serve their local and global communities.

Beyond the University of Sheffield, what is your ultimate ambition for the impact of this project? What would an “anti-ableist university” look like on a national or even global scale?

We have to be honest: we struggle with the universal idea of an anti-ableist university on a national or global scale: precisely because as soon as we think of universities in the global context we are pulled into a pre-existing imaginary: of university league tables and global rankings.

To imagine a shining example of an anti-ableist university – that stands out from other universities (note the ableism apparent in the language of ‘standing out’ here) – across different national contexts – risks understanding anti-ableism as a project done, dusted and completed. We think that ableism is endemic and will always find ways of appearing and reappearing in the university. We also feel unqualified to really comment on how such an entity – the anti-ableist university – would come to be formulated in local and national spaces that are unfamiliar to us. We are also wary of enforcing ideas of anti-ableism that we have developed in the UK on to places outside the UK.

Instead, we are happier to commit to anti-ableism practice as a means in itself rather than an end. We are content to sitting with ideas of impact associated with, for example, the generation of anti-ableist literacy (where we build local and inter/national conversations to increase our own and others criticality in relation to ableism) or the building of an anti-ableist commons (an online, every-morphing, endlessly sharing community where people publicise their ideas and practices that can be framed in terms of the anti-ableist). This literacy and this commons would permit connections to be made across the university sector both nationally and globally.

But we want to issue a warning: be careful of positing anti-ableist practices as universal and universalising ideas. We know that various complex and specific manifestations and expressions of ableism emerge in different localities. We know different national and local contexts give rise to very different models of the university. And we know too that disabled people occupy diverse social, economic and cultural positions depending on where they are located in the world. Anti-ableism is always a reflection of a time and place.

What advice would you give to other universities or research institutions that are looking to start their own anti-ableist initiatives?

First, we want our university colleagues to recognise that we are living in difficult times. WAARC’s aspirations to identify and share anti-ableist research culture have been deeply impacted by our current social, political, historical and economic context where universities are facing real financial difficulties, where EDI work is being globally sidelined and in a national context where disabled people’s benefits are under threat. Anti-ableism practice can never be a panacea for a university’s challenges when these challenges are so deeply complex.

Second, building an anti-ableist culture relies upon the commitment, passion and desire of academic and professional services colleagues who are committed to the politics of anti-ableism. Find your comrades – build your working relationships – and share your ideas. Take heart in the fact that there are so many folk in the university who are keen to work with disability’s promise.

Third, any positive changes to university research culture rely on the buy-in and support of senior leaders in the university as well as an openness to truly civic relationships with disabled people and their communities in and outside of the university. We are lucky to be supported by a senior team of academics and senior leaders at the University of Sheffield who are prepared to hold difficult conversations. These key players have to be on board with any anti-ableist practice.

Fourth, do not domesticate anti-ableism within the university. Ensure that DPOs and other key community partners are involved in any work that you undertake. Take hold of your university’s civic responsibilities – find it on the university website because it will be there as part of the mission – and find ways of turning these responsibilities into actions.

Fifth, recognise that in trying to identify anti-ableist practice this will create tensions and differences of opinion. As soon as we research our own contexts and working lives we will find them lacking. We are far from perfect because universities are far from perfect. Sit with these tensions and try to keep finding those moments when things feel better, more inclusive and more supportive.

Finally, ask who is the university for?

If your answer finds you welcoming only a particular kind of student, academic, researcher or professional services colleague then you are in danger of reinstating elitist ideas about the university. Widening participation, social inclusion and social justice have long been elements of the history of the university. One way of re-energising these ideals is through reference to anti-ableist practice.

What can individual researchers, both disabled and non-disabled, do in their day-to-day work to contribute to a more anti-ableist research culture?

A key element of anti-ableist research culture is to acknowledge support. Many disabled researchers spend a lot of time and effort curating forms of support that might, in reality, eat into their time to do research. Project Investigators (PIs) must recognise the time taken and resources required to put in place packages of support for all early career researchers. Some disabled and neurodivergent researchers draw on support via Access to Work (AtW) which does not necessarily pull in support in a timely nor adequate manner. This can be very frustrating especially for researchers and we know there is a need to raise the profile of AtW across universities and develop literacy amongst academic and professional services colleagues. We think that universities should adopt a more proactive rather than reactive approach to AtW; channelling resources to properly support accessing and drawing down upon this support.

We also need to think more broadly and more imaginatively about support. We know that academia tends to celebrate individual achievements. While this is all well and good – and we are committed to the career development of researchers – we want to highlight, celebrate and converse about support. As we mentioned earlier: we want to reassert the importance of human interdependence. It seems to us that when research is working well then so are our relationships. Embracing support as a positive element of research culture sits in direct counter-distinction to ableism; which tends to value individual achievement over anything else. So one question we would ask of disabled and non-disabled researchers would be: when do you experience support – as recipient and/or provider- when is support at its best? What makes for generative interdependencies? And how can you contribute to communities of support?

How can people follow the progress for the project and are there any opportunities for colleagues from the White Rose partner universities to get involved?

We are always interested in engaging with colleagues from the White Rose Universities. We already enjoy some close relationships with old and new friends at the University of Leeds’ Centre for Disability Studies.  Indeed, iHuman and WAARC  are working with our Leeds friends (alongside others) on an initiative called Disability Dialogues. This seeks to promote the work of new emerging scholars in the disability studies field through the collation of short provocative pieces.

What is striking about pieces of writing in Disability Dialogues is how keen researchers are to engage with questions of access, accountability and process: many applicable to the university context and therefore of interest to anyone who wants to identify forms of anti-ableist practice. We are keen to collate future contributions and encourage anyone interested in writing for the Disability Dialogues page to email Dan (d.goodley@sheffield.ac.uk). Finally, we are regularly updating emerging findings and headlines of the WAARC project and these can found on our website.