Led by: Tone Pernille Østern.

Led by: france rose hartline.

This DOABLE project’s work package (WP) explores how disability as an identity, embodiment and practice can be re-imagined through a lens of creative societal contribution. The starting point of the WP is that disability is still undervalued in its ability to enhance cultural practices around identity and embodiment. By reframing disability as contributory, we move away from a neoliberal reduction of the body’s material to its (re)productive capacity, and toward an understanding of functional diversity as expanding the boundaries of belonging for all bodies and practices. The WP will draw on a rich plethora of existing research to consider how disability can be better included through shifting cultural policies (e.g. Šubic & Ferri, 2022), redefining citizenship (e.g. Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2017), and inspiring artistic engagement (e.g. Sandahl, 2018). By examining the multiple ways in which disability can be re-conceptualised for what it offers to society, rather than ‘takes away’ (as it too often is currently formulated), this WP will help propel the project toward its goal of demonstrating the untapped ‘doable’ potential of disability. 

Led by: Libe García Zarranz.

This work package considers how literature and visual art can destabilize ableist temporal structures, opening up for the emergence of crip affect, feeling, and emotion (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018; Malatino, 2022; Smilges, 2023). We are committed to learning and unlearning with a long genealogy of theorists, activists, educators, and artists countering chrononormative time, while cultivating disability justice frames from anti-racist, transfeminist, and queer perspectives (Connor, Ferri & Annamma, 2015; Samuels and Freeman, 2021; Pyne, 2021; Schalk, 2022). We seek to engage with how the entanglement of crip temporalities and affects permeates a range of genres (letters, essay collections, and multimedia installations) by poets, artists, and activists such as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Lucas Crawford, Syrus Marcus Ware, and others. We further believe that integrating some of these critical concepts and lived experiences into the classroom can forge willful pedagogies (García Zarranz, 2024) that can counter racism, ableism, neuronormativity, transmisogyny, and other damaging pedagogies of pathologization (Annamma, 2017).

Led by: Terje Olsen.

Led by: Polina Golovátina-Mora.

Anna Ulrikke Andersen is an architectural historian and filmmaker, holding the positions as Associate Professor of Art History at the Institute of Art and Media Studies, NTNU . Her research project “An Architecture of Chronic Illness” explores how people living with rheumatism experience, think and talk about spaces where treatment takes place, focused on theraphy pools in Norway and a rehabilitation programme abroad, in Igalo, Montenegro. She is the author of Following Norberg-Schulz: An Architectural History through the Essay Film (2022), and curated the exhibition Chronic Conditions: Body and Building coordinated by the Lisbon Archtiecture Triennale and the Future Architecture Platform in 2021. She was the initiator of Norway’s first summer school in art and architecture for young people with disabilities with ROM for kunst og arkitektur, running annualle since 2023, also responsible for the school’s educational programme.

Dr. Libe García Zarranz (she/her) is Associate Professor in cultural theory and literatures in English in the Department of Teacher Education at NTNU. Her teaching and research sit at the intersection of literary studies, visual cultures, and affect theory, with a focus on feminist, crip, and trans approaches. She is the author of  the monograph TransCanadian Feminist Fictions: New Cross-Border Ethics and the co-editor of Living and Learning with Feminist Ethics, Literature and Art, a collection of critical essays which attends particularly to Indigenous and Black knowledges, queer, trans and disabled artistic interventions, and antiracist methodologies. She has published on neurodivergence in animation and on visual activist Syrus Marcus Ware who works with disability arts performance. She has also supervised BA and MA theses analyzing the representation of disability in textbooks, literature and film for young learners.

Vibeke Glørstad is a senior lecturer at VID Specialized University, Faculty of Health Science, Stavanger, Norway, with a Licentiate Degree (hovedfag) in Sociology and Cultural studies from the University of Oslo. Her teaching expertise includes social work at BA level and at the Master’s degree in citizenship and co-operation within the health, social, cultural and educational field. Her research interest is related to how vulnerable groups as people with disabilities (including cognitive and mental health) access and practice their citizenship rights, based in critical disability perspectives.  She publishes on political and cultural inclusive citizenship practices by people with disabilities and marginalized groups. Glørstad is a member of the Performance and disability working group in IFTR (International Federation of Theatre Research), with a rich international network.

Dr. Polina Golovátina-Mora is Associate Professor in Film and Media in Education at Faculty of Teacher Education at Norwegian University of Science and Technology – NTNU.  Polina`s research is informed by posthumanist feminism and critical pedagogy and focuses on qualitative, art-based and sensorial research methodology and pedagogy. Polina´s research at different moments has covered an intersection between narratives, language, and power, the monstrous as a reflection of current societal issues, theoretical alternatives to traditional views of nation-state, urban artistic practices, nature and elements in folklore and their social and environmental meanings as well as questions of memory and creativity. Polina positions her artistic work as reflective and distributed visual practice. In her artistic practice, Polina focuses on the meanings and ethics of relationality with the world, mixed senses and the attentive care they produce, elemental forces.

france rose hartline (he/him) is an artist and activist for queer, gender diverse and disability rights. Originally from the US, he moved to Norway in 2013, where he completed an MFA in Fine Art (2015) and PhD in Gender Studies (2020) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim Norway. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Gender Studies (2024) at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, Japan. Since 2022, france has been involved in disability rights activism by leading NTNU’s INCLUDE, a network for disabled university staff, which is the first of its kind in Norway. Currently, france resides in Trondheim, Norway, and is working with Arts-Based Research as an advocate for gender diverse joy-making through paper crafting.

Tony McCaffrey is Senior Lecturer in Creative Industries at the National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Art, Ara Institute, Christchurch, New Zealand. He has been an actor, director, and writer for many years and is artistic director of Different Light Theatre, an ensemble of learning-disabled artists founded in 2004 that has performed in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. McCaffrey is co-convenor of the Performance and Disability Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. He is the author of Incapacity and Theatricality: Politics and Aesthetics in Theatre Involving Actors with Intellectual Disabilities (2019), Giving and Taking Voice in Learning Disabled Theatre (2023), both with Routledge. He has contributed articles to Theatre Research International, Global Performance Studies, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism and Performance Philosophy. He has recently contributed chapters to Out of Time? Temporality in Disability Performance (2023, Routledge), How Does Disability Performance Travel? Access Arts and Internationalization (2024, Routledge), and The Cambridge Guide to Mixed Methods Research in Theatre and Performance Studies (2024, Cambridge University Press). Different Light are currently engaged in a collaboration on Ancient Greek Theatre and Learning Disability with companies in Australia, Belgium, Greece, UK, Switzerland, and Poland.

Dr. Terje Olsen holds a PhD in Sociology and is Research Director at Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research, Oslo. He has been working with research related to disability, inclusion and rights for over 20 years. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on employment for persons with severe disabilities. He has authored and edited books on the legal protection of persons with disabilities against abuse and encounters with criminal justice systems, and the significance of the CRPD (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities). He has led the work on two national surveys on the exposure of persons with disabilities to hate speech, harassment, and bullying. The first was conducted in 2016 and the second in 2024. Terje is a board member of the Norwegian Network for Disability Research.

Arnhild Staal Pettersen is Artistic and Managing Director at DansiT Choreographic Center. She is a dancer in Inclusive Dance Company and Artistic Director for The Dance Theatre. Her 20 years of experience as creative and performing dance artist in choreographic processes, influence her leadership, curation, and facilitation in her daily work at DansiT. She is dedicated to challenge the prevailing view of whose stories are told and what bodies are seen on stage and in the art field. As freelancer she has been dancing with companies like Cirka Teater, RAA Productions and Heine Avdal & Yukiko Shinozaki / fieldworks.

Andreas Schille is educated in visual arts from the Art academy in Trondheim. Schille currently works as advisor and educational video producer producing film and videos at NTNU. Schille has an interest in creating high quality media for learning and in supporting educators making accessible learning content. When working with documentary he tries to use an investigative approach, to get close and develop a personal contact with the subjects in his films. His film “Tell me what I see” (2023) about a student with visual and hearing impairment has been screen across various seminars, conferences and filmfestivals the last year, including nominations to MEDEA Awards, Nordic/Docs, Norwegian documentary film festival and TREFF. In addition, Schille in collaboration with Robin Støckert published the short paper “Tell Me What I See: Universal design and educational video for inclusive digital education” at HCI International 2023 – Late Breaking Posters.

Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research is an independent social science research foundation that develops knowledge on the conditions for participation in working life, organisational life, society, and politics. Research on disability, welfare policy and living condition is a central part of the institute’s area of interest.

VID  Specialized  University  has a strong research profile within practice-related research, diversity, social inequality and vulnerable groups. VID is disability focused both through their education programs as Social Educator (Vernepleie), Social work and  Nursing, and related further education programs, master programs and PhD programs.  VID’s motto is ‘Committed to humanity – locally and globally’. VID’s Strategic Plan 2022-2024 describes the first phase of VID’s efforts to become a value-based university by 2028.