Although the Wellcome Anti-Ableist Research Culture (WAARC) project has come to an end, this does not mean that the learning yielded as a result of it has come to an end too. We (the WAARC team) consider sharing such learning a duty of the project itself. Anti-Ableist research cultures is not something that is exclusive to the University of Sheffield, but it is a matter that affects all Higher Education (HE) institutions.
A half-day event was organised at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver on Wednesday, 29th July 2026. This was co-organised with Dr. Nadena Doharty, Associate Professor in Education and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Black Experiences in and through Education, and the Public Humanities Hub at UBC, including Terra Poirier, Dr. Althea Thauberger, Sophie Roth, Fahad Naveed, and Ying Han.
To ensure a wider audience as well as thinking about accessibility, the event was hybrid, enabling attendance both in-person and online. The accessibility of the event was central from the very initial discussions about holding such an event, including pre-event (e.g. planning, communication and information about the event), during the event (the structure and duration of the event, where the event was held, sensory considerations, live captioning), and post-event accessibility matters (e.g. feedback and aftercare).
The event consisted of different parts. It started with the relevant introductions and a land acknowledgement. Then, Dr Antonios Ktenidis, who represented the WAARC team, gave a presentation, introducing the team, including the Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs), the focus of the project (the three priority areas and the cross-cutting themes) and its findings. The slides were in an easy-read/plain English format produced by one of the DPOs, , an intentional and political choice, which aimed to disrupt the cognitive ableism that permeates HE. A Questions & Answer session (Q&A), moderated and chaired by Nadena, took place after the presentation. Excellent questions from both in-person and online attendees were raised, focusing on matters such as the links between precarity and disability, discourses of productivity and ableism, the ‘absent presence’ of disabled researchers in HE, and how to ultimately dismantle ableism in HE.
Some of those questions were also partly responded to by the next part of the event, which included an introduction from Antonios to the Antii-ableist Resources created as part of the project. Antonios emphasised the multi-modal nature of the various resources, which go beyond the ‘written’ word, e.g. zines, videos produced by DPOs, a podcast series, films, as a form of anti-ableist practice. He also invited the attendees to engage with some reflective questions, such as:
- Who is the audience of our ‘dissemination’?
- Who is ‘doing’ the dissemination?
- Where is dissemination taking place?
- What form does the dissemination take?
These presentations were recorded and will become available in the near future.
We then had a lunch break, which provided everyone for an opportunity to connect with or disconnect from each other based on what they felt like.
The next and final part was a zine-making workshop, focusing on the anti-ableist university. This was led by Terra Poirier, a disabled and neurodivergent artist who works with pinhole photography, artist books, and installation to explore precarity, memory, and solidarity, and co-facilitated with Antonios. Terra introduced participants to the history of zines and their disruptive potential, demonstrated how to create paper and audio zines, and provided prompt questions to facilitate the creation of such zines.
Terra also provided the materials for zine making as well as premade paper zines for attendees to work on and examples of zines on similar topics.
The attendees created some amazing, thought-provoking zines, which then had the opportunity to ‘display’ to and share with the other zine-makers in the room. Antonios coordinated this part, asking the attendees what their preferred way of displaying their zines was, if they wished to do so. Attendees provided verbal descriptions of their zines and Antonios prompted them to discuss the reasons behind the choices they had made, from the materials they had used to the content of their zines. Finally, Antonios led a reflective discussion on the zine-making workshop, focusing on aspects such as the joy of making, zine making as a form of knowledge production, and the role and need for such activities in ‘academic’ events. .
Overall, it was great to see how engaged attendees were throughout the event (with such engagement taking different forms), the need for such discussions to be held more often, consistently and with accountability, as well as the impact these anti-ableist resources can have on organisations and everyone that lives, works and learns within them.
