Stigma, Confinement, and Silence : On the Precarious Life and Death of John Derby

In this commentary, we take seriously the question of what does it mean to be in a precarious position and a precarious subject within educational institutions. Structured around three concepts, Stigma, Confinement, andSilence we discuss the life and death of art education scholar and colleague, John Derby. We attempt to address how John’s scholarship helped other researchers in art education orientate themselves and take a critical stance based on disability studies

Thematic issue on Independence of Art and Science

Within the last two decades, academic research has become subject to interdisciplinary work of increasing frequency. Interdisciplinary and, more recently, transdisciplinary collaborations are some- times understood as the most prospective solu- tions to solve contemporary world’s problems that are typically not discipline-based. The diverse backgrounds of researchers allow potentiality for convergent research (Kallio-Tavin, Fast, Heimonen, Pusa & Hari, 2021). As Riitta Hari (ALLEA, 2021) says, “most important problems don’t need to come in packages that feed just one discipline, and that is why we have to convert across disci- plines” (1:05). There are undoubtable advantages that come with processes of interdisciplinary col- laboration, such as constantly extending new areas of knowledge, finding solutions to the important problems, along with refining methodological prac- tices. At the same time, due to the differences in approaches and theoretical frameworks, collabora- tions can have significant challenges and even tan- gle consequences