In many sectors, conversations around Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) are common, but often the specific challenges and experiences of disabled people are overlooked. Across our three partner universities, we all face the same core challenge of keeping EDI work deeply grounded in real human experiences rather than paperwork. 

By examining the University of Sheffield’s Wellcome Anti-Ableist Research Culture (WAARC) project, we can explore how sustained, collaborative work that centres disabled researchers and professional services colleagues – as well as organisations run by disabled people –  can shift not just policy, but the everyday culture of a university. 

This case study serves as a springboard for partners to reflect on their own structures, share best practices, and consider how we can collectively champion anti-ableist practice to drive meaningful change. WAARC is one of 24 institutions funded by The Wellcome Trust Institutional Funding for Research Culture (IFRC) to research, develop, and enhance research culture within their universities. Rather than treating disability as something to accommodate, WAARC set out to reimagine the university with disability as a source of creativity, critical insight, and collective strength. 

Dr Kirsty Liddiard, Dr Antonios Ktenidis, Professor Dan Goodley and Professor Rebecca Lawthom are academic leads of the Wellcome Anti-Ableist Research Culture (WAARC) project at the University of Sheffield. They would also like to thank Dr Lauren White, Professor Katherine Runswick-Cole and Professor John Flint for their involvement in the WAARC project.

“Consider disability to be an opportunity not a problem”

– Professor Rebecca Lawthom

Looking back over the life of the WAARC project, what achievements are you proudest of?

Dan: The biggest achievement of WAARC has been to illuminate and celebrate disability as a productive phenomenon that, if approached correctly, offers real opportunities for making university research cultures more inclusive, purposeful, meaningful, exciting and responsive. 

We brought together academic, postgraduate, early career and contract researchers and professional services colleagues and disabled people’s organisations –  to develop a suite of activities that centre disability and contest systemic ableism in relation to three Priority Areas: Environment, Development and Collaboration. 

Antonios: One of WAARC’s proudest achievements is the central role eight Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) played in the project. Each of these DPOs worked with the researchers in ways that were meaningful and accessible to the organisations. For this work to take place, trust had to be built, in some cases from scratch (researchers had not worked with these DPOs previously) and in others it was ongoing work (with already established relationships).  Central to trust building was the practice of access intimacy; where we seek to intend to everyone’s access needs.

Kirsty: We’ve been able to create a website specifically for anti-abliesit resources. For example, this page on inclusive recruitment gives advice on writing a job description, through to advertising it, understanding the Disability Confident Scheme, FAQs, shortlisting and interviewing. 

This page shares work by disabled staff at Sheffield and documents the work and impact Disabled People’s Organisations can and should have on university culture to make our institutions more inclusive places to work with. 

This page on promoting positive research cultures provides a deep dive into work that reimagines university research culture, led by our Project Managers and Researchers, where we give advice on making project management and delivery more inclusive. 

This page on anti-ableist recruitment and employment good practice provides a detailed review of findings from interviews with disabled researchers and professional services colleagues with associated recommendations.

This page on inclusive university events shares advice on hosting an inclusive anti-ableist event across hybrid settings, while co-production and participatory research shares numerous examples of collaborative research between academic and non-academic partners that enhance the research exercise. 

This page explores inclusive research methods and approaches that engage disabled people in collaborative and equitable ways, while presentations and publications from the WAARC team feed into the wider project of building an anti-ableist university.

What impact have you had on policy or practice at the University of Sheffield?

Kirsty: Some early wins include the positive responses of many colleagues to our one day per week commitment to Researcher Career Development, enhancing the University’s commitment to the Concordat for the Professional Development of Researchers. Recognising the importance of giving time to researchers who are on short-term contracts is so important in these precarious times, and we are delighted that many of our researchers have successfully secured new positions as their contracts ended with WAARC.

Dan: The impact of WAARC will continue beyond the lifetime of the project. We raised and continue to raise awareness amongst senior university colleagues about anti-ableist philosophies and practices. Having senior leaders who are signed up to the principles of anti-ableism and disability justice is crucial and we are fortunate to have colleagues who are very much allies and supporters to WAARC’s work.

Rebecca: We have also been in conversations about the need to simplify and make accessible legal contracts that are appropriate and easily accessible to non-academic partners engaged in collaborative university research. Research contracts are often full of dense legal language and can demand a lot of time to read and review. Our Contracts Team are very responsive to thinking through more accessible formats so that we can undertake collaborative and co-produced research in ways that properly remunerate our collaborators.

Antonios: We have helped revise university travel and financial procedures to recognise funding of personal assistants for disabled colleagues during international travel; created new opportunities for library access for non-academic organisation partners who are not university staff nor students. I’d also flag the new online Inclusive Research Methods course that will be of particular interest to PGR and PGT students who aspire to engage in their own research in more collaborative, participatory and co-produced ways. 

How has working with disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) shaped the project’s outcomes?

Rebecca: None of the successes of WAARC would have been possible without our core DPO partners who were paid to work in collaboration with us across the different phases of our work; Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance; Speakup Self-advocacy; Sheffield Voices and NADSN. 

We also funded the involvement of DPOs in four additional Collaborative Projects (Our Vision Our Future, Extant; Buckinghamshire Disability Service; The Professors) in our hybrid events, webinar series and podcast series (Sheffield Public Health, Love Sheffield, Prestige Network, WealdBSL, Becoming Visible, Manchester Centre for the Deaf, Sunderland People First; Quiplash).  

Dan: These DPO partners were involved in all stages of the project from the original writing of the project proposal through ethics, methodological planning, analysis and dissemination.

Antonios: DPOs have made us rethink how we approach dissemination. Rather than producing long reports or guidance documents, we have been encouraged to embrace Easy Read, Plain English, BSL, film and audio formats. This renders information more easy to access and – potentially – more attractive as a proposition to engage with.

What has surprised you most about how colleagues have responded to anti-ableist practice?

“If you embrace anti-ableism then you benefit everybody”

– Professor Dan Goodley

Dan: We have been pleasantly surprised by how open our university colleagues have been to the aims and aspirations of WAARC. Many colleagues are committed to different forms of disability justice: challenging disabling barriers and offering community responses. And this appetite for change extends beyond the university. Also, while our project focused on disabled researchers, early on in our work our project coordinators Liz Dew and Elinor Nobel have pushed us to think more inclusively about key colleagues who are central to the creation of inclusive and positive research environments: professional services. Indeed, their own work on capturing and disseminating the impact of professional services has been an initially unanticipated but now essential part of our findings.

Kirsty: We have been delighted by the reach of WAARC. Dr Nikita Hayden’s work as the researcher for the Developments phase of work, demonstrated how colleagues from Public Health, the NHS, the university and disabled people’s organisations can come together to curate more productive ways of sharing good practice in their work with disabled people. An event held in 2025 – Reclaiming the Human in Healthcare – is one of the nine case studies we have helped formulate that foreground the importance of accessible and welcoming research events. All participants were so committed to access and anti-ableist practice, which they put into practice through being generous, open-minded and working with one another.

Rebecca: At times, bureaucracy gets in the way of innovation. Some of the best practices associated with building inclusive research cultures and anti-ableist practices are found in communities of disabled people and non-disabled allies working together. Universities cannot do this work alone. They need the input of disabled people’s organisations. 

Antonios: It takes a lot of labour (physical, emotional) and ‘spoons’ to do anti-ableist work, and often such labour remains invisible. What was great to see is how this labour was made visible to and acknowledged by everyone, how access did not remain an afterthought, but it was the starting and central point, and how different forms of access intimacy were developed and practised as a result.   

What role have the podcast series, arts exhibition, and public events played in sharing WAARC’s findings beyond academia?

Dan: “Cripping Research Culture”, a podcast that asks the question: “How can we make better working conditions for disabled staff in higher education?” – hosted and produced by Dr Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril – has been really well received with the listeners plugging in from all over the globe.

Kirsty: It’s been really wonderful to take anti-ableism out into the world! To see others engage with an anti-ableist approach, consider how it might reshape their own practice and research, and find the collectivity in understanding a need to bring about change, has been powerful. Our brilliant podcast series, the outputs of our four collaborative projects, and our detailed anti-ableist resources each raise important questions about knowledge production, relational ethics, and building an inclusive academy that all researchers should care about. 

Antonios: All of this work supports what WAARC is all about: re-valuing disability in the university as a source of creativity, connection, and community, and promoting the richness that disability brings. 

Rebecca: While there is much talk about public engagement, knowledge exchange and research impact, university researchers really do need to embrace innovative, engaging and interesting methods such as podcasting and the arts. We have been told time and time again by colleagues outside of the university that academic forms of knowledge production and exchange can actually exclude people whose work is undertaken outside the academy. Disability arts, for example, have long pushed a variety of audiences to rethink the very meaning of disability. And so we can learn much and be inspired by disabled artists, creatives and activists.

Find out more about WAARC and its work via the website. Colleagues outside of the University of Sheffield who would like to hear more about the project can contact Dan Goodley directly on d.goodley@sheffield.ac.uk to find out more.