Speaker biographies

Professor Dan Goodley, iHuman, University of Sheffield

Dan is Professor of Disability Studies and Education at the University of Sheffield and co-director of iHuman: an interdisciplinary research institute for the study of the human. Recent books include Disability and Other Human Questions (2020, Emerald) and Disability Studies (2016, Sage).

Kerri Betts

As a PhD candidate at the University of Leeds, I am currently working on my thesis entitled Literary and Linguistic Landscapes of Autism: Representations in Contemporary Fiction and Life Writing, a project that sits at the intersection of Medical Humanities, Disability Studies and Critical Autism Studies. My project explores the role autism and autistic communication plays in reformatting disability theory towards a more dynamic and nuanced approach. I incorporate environmental theories to questions and critique hierarchies of personhood and also teach on the module Environment, Crisis and Creativity: Contemporary Nature Writing. My research interests also include Posthumanism, Sociolinguistics and Ecocriticism.

Dr Vanessa Ashall

I am an interdisciplinary health researcher and qualified veterinary surgeon. I am interested in the meaning and significance of human-animal relationships in the context of health and medicine. My current project, funded by the Wellcome Trust, uses the sociological concept of interspecies entanglement to explore end of life care from an innovative interspecies and interdisciplinary perspective.

Jamie B Smith

Jamie works as a nurse, lecturer and researcher between Berlin and Edinburgh. His PhD at the University of Edinburgh explored nursing, institutional power with critical Posthuman Institutional Ethnography. Jamie studied psychology as an undergraduate, before training as a nurse and earning his Master’s degrees in both Nursing and Sociology. He works as a research associate at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin and The University of Edinburgh. Clinically, Jamie worked in Renal, Critical Care and as a Specialist Nurse: Organ Donation. Jamie’s research focusses on bringing critical posthuman theory to research using mixed methods of quantitative, qualitative and post-qualitative approaches to his work. His work explores how people, place and structures produce intimate relations and care. His current research projects include: a Posthuman institutional ethnography of nursing in Germany, the PflegeStressPlan project which is a mixed methods project looking at stressors in nursing in Germany, ‘Care in Praxis and Posthuman Care’ which is a project working with intuitive movement and dance to think with nursing practice. Jamie also is part of the Compost Collaborative research group, an international nursing research group, who research critical and affirmative ways of nursing.

Nicholas Griffin

Nicholas Griffin is a first year PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield. His thesis seeks to re-examine post-war Anglo-American drug fiction, with a view to understanding how the genre presents the human body as extreme and grotesque, in order to portray the hierarchies through which it is understood as a cultural and medical object. His research interests include twentieth century American fiction, literary theory, and the work of the Russian philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin.

Dr Olivia Turner

Olivia Turner is an artist and researcher living and working between Gateshead and Newcastle upon Tyne. She recently completed her creative practice-led PhD, titled Between Doctor, Patient and Cadaver: The Slippages of the Visceral Body in Medicine at Newcastle University, recipient of the Research Excellence Academy Studentship. She is currently working on Corporeal Pedagogies with her collaborator, Classical archaeologist, Dr Sally Waite: co-leading a series of experimental and experiential workshops using The Shefton Collection. This culminates in a Summer 2022 exhibition at The Great North Museum. In 2021, her artwork was published by John Hopkins University’s Centre for Medical Humanities, Tendon Magazine: Breath. Her most recent exhibitions include O (Symptom) (2021) Ex Libris Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne; Confusion of Tongues (2021) SpeakEasy, AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent; The Body (2021) Zest Hall [Online], Round Lemon; New Sculpture (2019) Cheeseburn Sculpture Gardens, Northumberland; Women and Power (2018) Cragside Estate and Gardens, National Trust, Northumberland. Olivia is on Twitter @OliviaTurnerArt and Instagram – @oliv.turner. Her website is: www.oliviaturner.co.uk

Eleanor Wakeford

Ellie is a first year PhD student at the University of Leeds working as part of the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures project, an interdisciplinary collaboration investigating connections between disability, culture, technology, and design. She is part of the research stream 'Imagining/Experiencing Disability, Care and Embodiment' and her work explores surveillance technologies and pandemic futures in speculative and science fiction.

Before joining the project Ellie received a BA in English Literature from the University of Leeds and an MSc in Medical Humanities from King's College London.

Bentley Crudgington

Bentley is a creative practitioner working at the interface of human, animal, and environmental health. Originally trained and working within veterinary and biomedical science, they have since transitioned out of laboratory research into creative facilitation. Their main motivation has been to address the culture of communication around animal research and reimagine who could inform these discussions and how it might feel to participate. Their work varies from large scale immersive theatre to intimate one-on-one discussions between two people. These activities differ in form and methods, but they foreground the conversation as the unit of exchange, and by centring care and ethics, help people have difficult and normally private conversations publicly.

Animal Research Nexus (AnimalResearchNexus.org)

@incidentallyb (https://linktr.ee/IncidentallyBentley)