Affective economies, autism, and ‘challenging behaviour’: socio-spatial emotions in disabled children’s education

This paper tells a story of a small action in a fleeting moment in a morning spent in a UK special school classroom with Molly, a child with an autism diagnosis. It brings the socio-politically active sphere of Critical Disability Studies (Goodley, 2014; Goodley and Runswick-Cole, 2014; Titchkosky and Michalko, 2012; Shildrick, 2012; Titchkosky 2011) and more recently, the emergent Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies (Runswick-Cole, Curran and Liddiard, 2017; Curran and Runswick-Cole, 2013) in to conversation with emotional geographies in education (Kenway and Youdell, 2011). This paper rejects the pathologising of disabled children’s emotions as symptoms of disorder and instead reorientates our gaze towards emotions as socio-spatially mediated in the subjectification of children in school spaces. It does this by drawing together the theoretical tools of Ahmed’s affective economies (2004a; 2004b) to explore the interventions in the everyday lives of disabled school children. Ahmed’s affective economies are put to work to explore the emotions produced, reproduced and resisted between bodies in disabled children’s schooling. Through such a reorientation we can explore how the subjectivation of children labelled with Special Educational Needs or Disability (SEND) becomes between bodies rather than residing within an individual child’s pathology or psychology

Comic strip findings: autistic young people's and families' experiences of education during Covid-19

This comic strip represents 3 of the findings from a Sheffield Hallam University research project with autistic young people and their families. There is also a full project report and a digital collection of autistic young people's artworks

Digital Collection: autistic young people's experiences of education during Covid-19

This collection compiles the artworks of a class of year 11 autistic school pupils in July 2021 sharing what education has been like for them during the Covid-19 pandemic as part of a broader research project about autistic young people's and families' experiences during this time

'I was excited by the idea of a project that focuses on those unasked questions' Co-producing disability research with disabled young people

In this article, we detail the politics and practicalities of co‐produced disability research with disabled young people with life‐limiting and life‐threatening impairments. We centre an ESRC‐funded arts‐informed co‐produced research project that has brought together a Co‐Researcher Collective of disabled young people. Co‐production is an established approach; however, our co‐researchers have led us to develop inclusive research practices that engage with online social research methods in innovative ways. As we detail our experiences, we aim to encourage disability studies researchers and others to adopt virtual environments when researching with and for the lives of disabled people