Disability Studies is an area of study which examines social, political, cultural, and economic factors that define 'disability' and establish personal and collective responses to difference. This insightful new text will introduce readers to the discipline of Disability Studies and enable them to engage in the lively debates within the field. By offering an accessible yet rigorous approach to Disability Studies, the authors provide a critical analysis of key current issues and consider ways in which the subject can be studied through national and international perspectives, policies, culture and history. Key debates include: The relationship between activism and the academy Ways to study cultural and media representations of disability The importance of disability history and how societies can change National and international perspectives on children, childhood and education Political perspectives on disability and identity The place of the body in disability theory This text offers real-world examples of topics that are important to debates and offers a much needed truly international scope on the questions at hand. It is an essential read for any individual studying, practising or with an interest in Disability Studies.

This co-authored text critically explores the key findings of the Living Life to the Fullest project - a project that has explored the lives, thoughts, hopes and aspirations of disabled young people living with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions. Written by disabled young people and academic researchers, the book articulates ethical co-production in social research. The prolific contemporary political and theoretical debates about life, death and the human in an age of global precarity and austerity are explored in this book. Chapters draw upon key themes and co-researchers' priorities for writing about their lives: for example, the politics and potentials of co-production as a research method/ology; animal and human relationships; aging, time; sexuality and body image; politics, activism and disability arts and culture; and fragility, and death and dying.

Disabled children's lives have often been discussed through medical concepts of disability rather than concepts of childhood. Western understandings of childhood have defined disabled children against child development 'norms' and have provided the rationale for segregated or 'special' welfare and education provision. In contrast, disabled children's childhood studies begins with the view that studies of children's impairment are not studies of their childhoods. Disabled children's childhood studies demands ethical research practices that position disabled children and young people at the centre of the inquiry outside of the shadow of perceived 'norms'. The Palgrave Handbook of Disabled Children's Childhood Studies will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, as well as practitioners in health, education, social work and youth work.

"This book provides an introduction to four widely used qualitative research methods, followed by a detailed discussion of a pluralistic approach to qualitative research?makes exceellent use of questions both in order to help the reader gain clarity as well as to encourage reflexivity" The Psychologist, May 2012

Disability Studies is an area of study which examines social, political, cultural, and economic factors that define 'disability' and establish personal and collective responses to difference. This insightful new text will introduce readers to the discipline of Disability Studies and enable them to engage in the lively debates within the field. By offering an accessible yet rigorous approach to Disability Studies, the authors provide a critical analysis of key current issues and consider ways in which the subject can be studied through national and international perspectives, policies, culture and history. Key debates include: The relationship between activism and the academy Ways to study cultural and media representations of disability The importance of disability history and how societies can change National and international perspectives on children, childhood and education Political perspectives on disability and identity The place of the body in disability theory This text offers real-world examples of topics that are important to debates and offers a much needed truly international scope on the questions at hand. It is an essential read for any individual studying, practising or with an interest in Disability Studies.