When setting up the premises for a dialogue between disability studies and critical trauma studies and embarking on editing this pilot issue on ‘encounters’ between the two disciplines, we necessarily welcomed interdisciplinary approaches, ranging across disability studies, trauma studies, literary and cultural studies, media studies, as well as many other disciplines in the humanities. The first step in introducing this issue to our readers will be to present the histories of both disability studies and trauma studies in order to see how they evolved and see why our proposal that they should meet half way or at least more often can be considered a valid opeer-reviewe
