The Critical Physiotherapy Network is an international collaborative network of critically-informed academics, clinicians & researchers who draw on the health sciences, social sciences & the humanities to explore, challenge & develop physiotherapy theory & practice.
Network constitution
The Critical Physiotherapy Network was formed from a desire to challenge & reform physiotherapy practice & thinking.
The Network is founded on the belief that the physical therapies can make a much more valuable & significant contribution to the lives of people today than the historically & socially self-imposed limits that the profession currently allow. The Network has been made possible by a growing sense that a critical mass of physiotherapists are eager to challenge contemporary physiotherapy theory & practice & work towards a more positive, inclusive, critical future for physiotherapy.
The network will appeal to people with an interest in the practice of physiotherapy, including people who are not practising physiotherapists. We seek to encourage contributions from academics, clinicians, educators, researchers & students, & anyone who can help us achieve the objects set out below.
Objects
The Critical Physiotherapy Network will strive to challenge contemporary physiotherapy theory and practice by:
- Actively exploring the world beyond the current boundaries of physiotherapy practice & thought
- Challenging physiotherapy to critically examine its position on alterity & otherness, abnormality, deviance, difference & disability
- Recognising & problematising power asymmetries inherent in physiotherapy practice, particularly where they marginalize some groups at the expense of others
- Developing a culture & appreciation for the exploration of all views that deviate from conventional thought & practice in physiotherapy
- Actively embracing ideas that promote thinking against the grain/challenging in physiotherapy
- Being open to a plurality of ideas, practices, objects, systems & structures that challenge contemporary physiotherapy practice & thought
- Promoting critically-informed thinking, encouraging ideas from diverse disciplines uncommon in mainstream physiotherapy, including anthropology, the arts, cultural studies, critical theory, education, geography, historiography, quantum physics, humanities, linguistics, philosophy, politics, sociology & others
- Providing a space for ideas that promote a more positive, diverse & inclusive future for the profession.
Translations of the constitution are available to read/download here – with thanks to network members who have made that possible.