The Disability and Knowledge research project explores expansively the nature of knowledge from the perspective of disability studies and disability experiences, with an ultimate goal to develop new epistemic and narrative resources for shared understanding, encounter, and belonging, and towards a better, more inclusive future. The March, 2023 Rome workshop will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners with the aim of 1) developing the project’s conceptual framework; 2) raising a series of questions which the framework poses; and 3) creating an interactive space for disability experiences to be heard and reflected upon.
In order to focus the research conversation, the workshop committee proposes organizing reflection on disability and knowledge around the concept of “relationality.” The panels on the first day of the conference will feature a practice-based look at relationality through conservation with people who live and work in disability communities. The first panel, a round table discussion, invites reflection on the theme from participants whose work bridges the worlds of disability communities and University settings. The second panel presents a documentary film about a public bicycling project undertaken by a group of friends with and without disabilities. The panels on the second day ask how a relational approach, with disability at its center, might change the way we think about and within three specific fields, namely, philosophy, politics and theology, as well as the kinds of knowledge, public policies and recommendations produced within them. A final panel will seek to bring the research project forward and set its research and publication agenda.
Schedule:
MARCH 20
16:00-17:30 Introduction to the Conference and Panel 1
Introduction: Disability and Knowledge
Clemens Sedmak (Notre Dame Nanovic Institute), Vittorio Montemaggi (Cambridge University), Silvia Dall’Olio (Notre Dame Rome Global Gateway)
Panel 1: Building Bridges of Knowledge: Disability and the University
Carole Irwin (Lyn’s House, Cambridge University), Christina Anglès d’Auriac (Emmaus House, Ukrainian Catholic University/L’Arche Compiègne), Giancarlo Cursi (L’Arche Rome, Salesian Pontifical University) & L’Arche Italy core member guests
18:00-19:30 Panel 2
Panel 2: Da Bologna a Roma in Tandem (From Bologna to Rome on a Tandem Bicycle)
Documentary Showing and Presentation
Film Showing and Public Conversation with participants in the Bologna-Rome tandem bicycle project
All are welcome to a reception following the film presentation
