Plain English: My Research

Image of a stack of books. Photo by Dayna Bateman (cc).

Image: a stack of books. Photo by Dayna Bateman (cc).

Post inspired by the #phdchat discussion on putting research into plain English.

Emancipatory research should be totally accessible to all, even though that can be difficult to achieve when universities demand styles of writing that are inaccessible to most. I find it particularly hard to write in clear, plain English (mostly because my brain doesn’t like making sense), but that’s no excuse for not trying. So I’m going to try to write updates in accessible language more often. Let me know if I start drifting into academic-speak and making no sense.

In my research, I’m looking at the experiences of disabled Christians. Incredibly, this has not been done before, and the issue is extremely under-considered in churches and religious contexts. It is also rarely discussed in religious studies in academia.

I’m looking at the way Christians and churches respond to disabled people, and to the issue of disability. This involves finding out where Christians get their ideas on disability. I have been listening to disabled church-goers about what church is like for them: their experiences of being included in churches, as well as their experiences of exclusion. Exclusion could means lots of things. It could be about physical access difficulties, attitudes that people find unhelpful, or discrimination because of disability. I have also been listening to church leaders and observing church services.

For context, I looked at theories of disability in Christianity, before I went out to talk to people. I’ve been looking at the history of churches in relation to disability, which is extremely interesting, and again rarely talked about in disability circles. I’m particularly interested in ideas of healing and the body, and how this relates to disabled people’s self-image and identity. For example, in relation to stories in the gospels where Jesus heals people: I want to go know how people in churches use these stories and how they feel about them. These theories will help me understand the categories that Christians use to organise ideas and experiences about disability.

For me, the most important thing about my research is that I want it to be a study that is as emancipatory as possible. Emancipatory disability research is a way of doing research, designed by disability studies academics and disability justice activists, which tries to make sure that disabled people have control of research. In the past (and often still today), academic research on disability was done by people who know nothing about what it’s like to be disabled. Disability studies has tried to change that by making sure that, in research studies, disabled people are treated as the experts on disability, whereas the researcher is only an expert on research. (This gets more complicated when you’re a disabled researcher yourself, as I am, but that’s another story!) This approach to research has proved extremely difficult to do, in practice, but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. I’m working with a group of disabled Christians who are holding me to account over my work, telling me if I’m asking the right questions and researching the right areas. I’m continually applying for funding to pay everyone involved in the research, as disabled people are far too often asked to give something for nothing. Of course, there’s little funding available, so I have sometimes ended up covering these costs myself. I’m determined to find a way to make this research accountable to disabled people, though, even if that turns out to be an expensive commitment.

This kind of research also involves a principle of ‘giving back’ to the community you’ve researched – in this case, to disabled Christians, and churches. So towards the end of the research, and afterwards, I hope that I’ll be able to offer training to churches in how to make their practice more accessible for disabled people, for example. As a trainer, campaigner and researcher, I hope there will be various things I can do to ‘give back’ to disabled Christians and their churches, and to share my findings widely.

I’m very grateful to all the people who have generously shared their time with me and taken part in the research. Their stories are valuable and I hope not to waste them, but to feed back their experiences to churches and beyond.

I’m @naomi_jacobs on twitter if you would like to ask more about the research, and my academia.edu profile is here.

Stephen D’Evelyn on the Church of England and Human Realism

I thought my readers might be interested in these fascinating thoughts from a disabled person who has been involved in ordination training in the Church of England. He identifies discrimination and issues with equality law, in relation to disabled ordinands/would-be ordinands. This is something I am finding in my research among a few of my participants. My study is qualitative, so the results can’t be generalised (meaning we can’t assume they apply to everyone). But it’s very interesting to hear stories of disabled people who are aiming to be ordained in the Church of England, and the barriers they are facing. Here, Stephen D’Evelyn reflects on his experiences of this.

Avon's Edge -- Stephen D'Evelyn's Blog

Recently, the Conservative government has decided to cut Employment and Support Allowance for new claimants. (See: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/29/employment-and-support-allowance-the-disability-benefit-cuts-you-have-not-heard-about). ESA is a state benefit which some disabled people receive to help level the playing-field when it comes to income. There is widespread statistical evidence that being disabled also means being financially disempowered. So the proposed changes should again bring to the fore questions about employment in the broad sense of what we as disabled people do with o9ur time.

In speaking of employment–‘vocation’ and the processes by which people become ministers, the Church of England is not always transparent, and certainly not always inclined to promote disenfranchised people actively. The actual procedure by which people are selected and then trained for ministry are in fact mysterious and often shrouded in mystery. God may move in mysterious ways, but when it comes to acting as an employer, the church should not.

My own…

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The Blogging Graduate Student

“The irony is not lost on me, that I could never have been at the AAR conference in person. Travelling to conferences as a disabled student is getting more and more difficult… I blog so that I can share my developing ideas in a forum that is actually accessible to me.”

Photo: Newspaper on a tube seat. Headline reads “20,000 a day start a blog”. CC Annie Mole, flickr.

Should postgraduate researchers blog?

Allowing It To Happen, Pt 2: Academia, Accessibility and Elitism

“Under normalcy, no one is or can be normal, just as no one is or can be equal. All have to work hard to make it seem like they conform, and so the person with disabilities is singled out as a dramatic case of not belonging. This identification makes it easier for the rest to think they fit the paradigm.”

– Lennard Davis, ‘Bodies of Difference: Politics, Disability, and Representation’

Some things have got me thinking more deeply recently about accessibility in academia.

Allowing It To Happen Pt 1: Disabled Students, All Students, and the PhD Process

“Ethically, I believe that emancipatory work and social justice should be at the heart of everything we are doing – and that goes for people outside and inside the academy.”

In memory of John Hull

Professor John Hull, 2006. Photo from his website at http://www.johnmhull.biz/ .

Professor John Hull died last week.

Anyone who’s read my writing will not need an introduction to John Hull. I reference and quote him constantly. He was an inspired, innovative, critical and very thought-provoking theologian who approached disability and Christian theology in entirely new ways. He was blind, and spoke about disability and the Bible from a personal viewpoint as well as a theological one – reminding me that theology is always personal. He helped me to believe that I could research disability and Christianity in ways that could actually have impacts on the churches.

I was fortunate enough to hear John Hull speak twice, both times at the Inclusive Church/St Martin-in-the-Fields conference on disability and Christianity. I will always remember something John said at the first conference where I heard him. He was speaking critically, boldly, about the ways in which the gospels fail disabled people. Giving me permission to criticise too, through the power of his very honest speech. No cushioning here, no efforts to make other people more comfortable about their bigotry – instead, clear accusations of harm that the Bible has done through the ages.

And then a reference to the one incident from the gospels where he felt that Jesus finally understood him, as a blind man. When Jesus was blindfolded by the soldiers who taunted him and said “Prophesy!” As John said, while it wasn’t a full sharing of his experiences, “It showed willing.”

Sometimes it feels like Jesus and I constantly shuffle around each other awkwardly, never quite connecting with each other. The more I study the gospel healing narratives, and the modern experiences of disabled Christians, and the further I personally get from Christianity, the more alienated we often are from each other. Yet we’ll never be strangers. Because there’s always an echo in the gospels of the Jesus who shows willing. Who tells me I can criticise as well as celebrate. I’m very grateful for John Hull for showing me that.

Or, in his own words: “My relationship to God has become more intimate, but I had to overcome the sense that darkness is an alienating experience. I began to think of darkness as a time of intimacy, warmth, enclosure. It is in the darkness that we are with the ones we love and trust. Gradually, my image of Jesus Christ, my spiritual understanding of discipleship underwent a change as I fastened my imagination upon certain incidents in the life of Jesus, principally the blindfolded Christ.” – John Hull

There is another Inclusive Church/St Martin’s disability conference in October, and no doubt we’ll be sharing memories of John there. More info here later, or follow the website link below.

http://inclusive-church.org.uk/disability-conference-2015

Neuroqueering Academia! Conference Accessibility – Pt 1: Neurodiversity

This is the beginning of a series of blog posts on disability and academia, partly based on recent experiences I’ve had as a disabled/neurodivergent attender of academic conferences. Part 2 will be about physical access (oh, and how much fun I’ve had with that over the past year). And there will be a part with recommendations. This part, though, is about my experiences of neurodiversity access at conference. It’s going to be a long one, so I’m dividing it up with headings – readers can jump to the section that they’re most interested in.

The Missing People

Picture of empty church. By J.Guffogg & J.Hannan-Briggs – CC.

Later edit: Please note that I have now finished the interviewing stage of my research. I was delighted that some people with mental health problems came forward to volunteer to be interviewed. Their experiences are forming part of my conclusions about disability and exclusion from churches.

There’s a missing group of people in my research into disability and churches, so far. It’s Christians with mental health problems.

I know from both existing research and personal/second-hand experience that churches can have varying responses to people experiencing mental health problems. There’s already some research and writing on the subject, but most of the academic research focuses on what churches are doing and comes from a medical ‘care’ perspective (or a ‘recovery’ perspective). I’d really like to contribute to better understanding of people’s lived experiences – of what’s really going on for Christians with mental health problems. I hope this will be helpful for them, and for churches.