The Faculty is internationally recognised for its outstanding research with adults with learning disability. Within this theme, researchers are pursuing two key strands of research: the study of advocacy and self-advocacy, and the social history of learning disability.
Our research on the history of learning disability includes archival study, biographical research, targeted local history case studies, and policy analysis. Recently completed projects include two studies funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund: Reclaiming the Past and Hidden Heritage. Investigation of advocacy and self-advocacy includes evaluative research into the effectiveness of advocacy in practice, comparative studies of advocacy and theoretical developments in advocacy.
Our PhD students make an important contribution to the understanding of past and present policy and practice in learning. Research and scholarship is successfully combined with participatory methodology and inclusive conferences. Resulting publications are themselves participatory, and include the voices of people with learning difficulties as well as historians and researchers. The ESRC seminar series Service User Agendas in Research: Emancipatory and Inclusive Paradigms, where skills were communicated between life course groups, acknowledged this methodological expertise.
This research theme includes the internationally-renowned Social History of Learning Difficulties Research Group, core membership of which is based at The Open University, but which includes people with learning difficulties and academics from other universities in the UK and in Europe, North America, Japan and Australia.
Dorothy Atkinson, Open University
Pauline Brand, Open University
Lindsay Brigham, Open University
Ian Buchanan, University of York
Rohhss Chapman, University of Manchester
Pamela Dale, Exeter University
Daniel Doherty
Sue Dumbleton, Open University
Helen Graham, Open University
Robert Johnson
Sue Ledger, Open University
Duncan Mitchell, University of Manchester
Melanie Nind, University of Southampton
Liz Tilley, GSCC
Sheena Rolph, Open University
Louise Townson
Jan Walmsley, Visiting Professor, Open University
Jehn Welshman, University of Lancaster
John Adams
Lee Humber
Nigel Ingham
Susan Ledger
Neil Morris