David Bolt - The Centre For Culture & Disability Studies

The Centre For Culture & Disability Studies

Dr. Bolt is the Director, and Dr. Ria Cheyne is the Deputy Director of the CCDS. The CCDS is housed in the Graduate School, Faculty of Education, at Liverpool Hope University. Like much work in the field of Disability Studies, the work of CCDS is fundamentally concerned with social justice: with challenging and changing the inequalities and prejudices that people who are disabled face on a daily basis. Though there are other centres for Disability Studies in the UK, the CCDS is unique in its focus on culture as the means by which prejudices around disability are circulated and perpetuated.

Key areas of interest include:
• The analysis of representations of disability in all forms of cultural production (e.g., literature, film, art, advertising, television, etc.), and how these shape wider public understandings of disability.
• Curricular reform at all levels of education. Disability remains marginalized in comparison to issues of gender, ethnicity, and sexuality, so we work to promote the inclusion of disability issues and disabled peoples’ voices across the curriculum.

The mission of the CCDS is to address the avoidance of informed discussions about disability in all educational settings by promoting and facilitating a culture of critical engagement with disability, the broader aim being to deepen understandings of disability and thus improve attitudes and actions toward people who have impairments. The CCDS holds free monthly seminars that are open to the public; produces monthly newsletters; publishes three issues of JLCDS per year; awards an annual prize, The CCDS Outstanding Achievement Award, to an undergraduate who produces outstanding research that relates to the focus of the CCDS; hosts international conferences; and hosts the International Network of Literary & Cultural Disability Scholars through Facebook and Twitter.