It is almost 40 years since I became an occupational therapist. I was a student in Liverpool and then a clinician, first in a large university teaching hospital in Oxford, then in a regional rehabilitation centre in Saskatchewan, Canada, and subsequently in a rural area of Saskatchewan. After some years in this role I decided to upgrade my education, so returned to the UK, and the University of Southampton, to undertake an MSc in Rehabilitation Studies. It was here that I met the work of critical disability theorists, such as Oliver and Barnes, whose work resonated so strongly with my own experiences of living and working with disabled people that I can recall sitting up in bed, reading … [Read more...] about 30DoS 2018 Day 24 – Karen Whalley Hammell

I’ve never taken things particularly seriously, either academically or living with muscular dystrophy.  Having stumbled into physio—literally, I kept falling over, so they made me go—I started thinking sociologically while in the waiting room.  I found that I could do two things at once, picking apart my personal experience of disability while poking holes in the Serious Science of Physical Therapy.  Why all this goal setting, why all this paperwork?  I had been reading a lot of critical theory, you know, Foucault, Heidegger, and the like, without a place to make sense of it.  Though I had never really thought of myself as a disabled person, as I started going through the disability … [Read more...] about 30DoS 2018 Day 23 – Thomas Abrams

Hi everyone. My name is Lester Jones and I am a pain physiotherapist and educator. I have spent a long time at university and in the clinic exploring human health and behaviour including 4 years of psychology and a Masters degree in pain. If I had been driven in a different way, I would have spent that time doing a PhD - thankfully I wasn't - but now I find myself back at university doing just that with the amazing research group at Judith Lumley Centre. In my research, I am interested in the multiple dimensions of pain and how we can work with the complexity in different contexts. I was the inaugural chair of the APA National Pain Group and currently, I am on the committee for the … [Read more...] about 30DoS 2018 Day 22 – Lester Jones