The project will explore the embodied selves of disabled young people. Its focus will be on how they create meaning from and via their bodies; how the body plays a role in their engagement with the social and material world; and how embodiment is influenced by their social transition into adolescence. A particular aspect of the work will consider how they define, understand and manage pain.

The project will involve a variety of methods which will bring together digital and textual data and modes of analysis. The approach of the research will be influenced by a research panel of disabled young people who will help develop the methodology and analysis.

Date: Mar 2011 – Feb 2013

Funding: ESRC: The Economic and Social Research Council. £227,511

Researchers: Janice McLaughlin (PI) – Geography, Politics and Sociology, Allan Colver (Institute of Health & Society),  and Patrick Olivier (CIs).                                          
Gavin Wood, Dan Jackson, Cass Ladha, Jayne Wallace, Edmund Coleman-Fountain, Abigail Durrant – Geography, Politics and Sociology.