Q&A lunch and roundtable discussion of barriers to inclusion in anthropology with two former members of the department: Harshadha Balasubramanian (UCL), and Julia Modern (Inclusion London).
This event is part of the celebration of the launch of the book Inaccessible Access (2024), edited by Kelly Fagan Robinson, Mark T. Carew and Nora Ellen Groce.
Inaccessible Access ethnographically focuses on the social, environmental, communicative, and epistemological barriers that people with disabilities confront and embody throughout the course of their learning, and in the specific context of higher education institutions and in research. It is presented by a neurodiverse, disabled, and non-cis cohort of authors, all of whom acknowledge a continuum of (in)access specific to their 'non-normal' status. The authors and editors of this book foreground the work that has yet to be done on recognizing the value of nonnormative ways of approaching, being in, and knowing research and higher education, particularly in cases where disablity-centered epistemologies are sidelined in confrontation with institutional norms, even within existing discourses concerning equality and alterity.https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/inaccessible-access/9781978841451/#generate-pdf
Harshadha (Harsha) Balasubramanian is a doctoral candidate in the Centre for Digital Anthropology at UCL and an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art. Harsha’s PhD, funded by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership, explores ableism in the digitised creative industries by studying independent artists who are rethinking non-visual access to virtual reality artwork with visually-impaired collaborators. Outputs from this research have included critical reflections on anthropological fieldwork, as well as prototypes and papers in collaboration with Harsha’s interlocutors, Microsoft Research, and the Critical Design Lab. Harsha’s scholarly interests burgeoned from undergraduate training in Cambridge Anthropology (2013-2016), during which time she served as CUSAS Co-president and began her research on non-visual access in the West End.
A panel discussion will also be held later in the day to celebrate the launch of Inaccessible Access. The event details are here.