Each year, the university celebrates Disability Recognition Month. This year, we’re celebrating between Wednesday 16 November and Friday 16 December.

For 2022, we have a variety of events and celebrations – everything from panel discussions, talks, and workshops for staff and students to get involved in.

Highlights of the month include:

What’s new in the Disability space?

Thursday 17 November 2022
This event showcases initiatives and the provision of service for disabled staff and students, allies, managers and anyone who wants to know more about the support available at UoN.
Attendees will be updated with the changes that are being made across the university to increase support.  The event is being run in conjunction with the HealthyU Campaign.
The theme for Disability Recognition Month is ‘Disability, Health and Wellbeing’.
The event will feature several short presentations from a range of speakers from across the institution.

Poetry Reading and Q&A with Lisa Kelly

Tuesday 22 November 2022
The event will consist of a 20-minute reading from poet Lisa Kelly, then a 20-minite audience Q&A, and finally a closing 10-minute reading.
Lisa’s debut collection A Map Towards Fluency was published by Carcanet (2019) and was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize. She is also the author of several poetry pamphlets, including Philip Levine’s Good Ear, which explores her single-sided deafness (Stonewood Press, 2018). Her poetry has been featured in multiple journals, magazines and anthologies, including in Carcanet’s New Poetries VII (2018) and the ground-breaking Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches Press, 2017); she teaches creative writing and poetry in performance at the Torriano Meeting House in London, and is current co-Chair of Magma Poetry. Find out more about Lisa’s work.

Let’s Talk….Paralympic Sport

Thursday 1 December 2022
Open to students, staff and key external partners.
We will have a panel of speakers who have achieved at the highest level and will be talking about their own lived experiences and how it has helped them through all facets of life. We will hear from three speakers:

• Sophie Unwin, GB Paralympic Cycling silver medallist and World Championship gold medallist,
• Joe Bestwick, GB Paralympic Wheelchair Basketball Bronze medallist, European Championship gold medallist and current Wheelchair Basketball Development Officer at the University:
• Tim Jeffery, GB Paralympic shooting finalist, World Championship gold medallist and former University of Nottingham student.

Covid as a mass-disabling event: A pegagogy of kindness in pandemic times

Wednesday 14 December 2022
This webinar features Professor Cate Denial, Bright Distinguished Professor of American History at Knox College, University of Nottingham alumna, and PI on a $150,000 Mellon Foundation grant analysing practices of care in academia during Covid. Professor Denial will discuss the need to practice a “pedagogy of kindness” to create a more inclusive and just academy.
Drawing on her research and own experiences with disability, Professor Denial will prompt us to re-evaluate our ideas of educational “rigour” not only in response to the pandemic as a mass-disabling event, but also a part of larger efforts to make higher education more accessible for disabled students and instructors alike.

Find a full list of events to get involved with for this year’s Disability Recognition Month celebrations.