Celebrating innovative research this Disability History Month

Dr Ellen Adams (Classics and Liberal Arts)

Dr Ellen Adams is Reader in Classical Archaeology and Liberal Arts. One aspect of Dr Adams’s research investigates how Classics may engage with disability studies, with a focus on the experience of Deaf and blind or partially sighted people in museums. This includes events curated in museums that explore the impact of audio description and British Sign Language tours, supported by the Wellcome Trust and King’s London Challenge Fund. In 2018, Dr Adams established the Museum Access Network for Sensory Impairments (London) (www.mansil.uk).

Read Dr Ellen Adam’s research portal profile

Dr Deborah Chinn (Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care)

Dr Deborah Chinn works part-time in a teaching and research role and part-time as an NHS clinical psychologist in a community team, for people with intellectual disabilities. In research, Deborah's key interests are in access to health information and health services, health and social care determinants and inequalities. Her research has looked specifically at access to health information and health and social care for people with intellectual disabilities.

Deborah is currently leading on an NIHR School for Social Care Research funded project called 'Feeling at Home' (www.feelingathome.org.uk ). This project focuses on whether people with learning disabilities living in group homes really feel 'at home' where they live and what staff and services can do promote this key aspect of residential care.

Read Dr Deborah Chinn’s research portal profile

Dr Carla Finesilver (School of Education, Communication & Society)

Dr Carla Finesilver is Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education and Inclusion, with a particular focus on the intersection of these two fields – inclusive mathematics education. Her aim is, through research and teaching, to make education more accessible and relevant for all, but particularly for disadvantaged young people and adults.

A main research focus has been the creative and diverse representational strategies and arithmetical reasoning of those students who have struggled with school mathematics taught in ‘standard’ or ‘traditional’ ways. Her current research projects focus on:

• visuospatial representation in problem-solving, using qualitative microanalysis of learners' nonstandard arithmetical-representational strategies.
• improving inclusive education for marginalised learners with diverse educational needs, including disabled, neurodiverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged students.
• teacher training on inclusive pedagogy for supporting students with SEN/Ds in the mainstream mathematics classroom.

Read Dr Carla Finesilver’s research portal profile

Prof Francesca Happé (Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre)

Prof Happé’s primary research focus is autism. Some of her most recent work focuses on mental health on the autism spectrum, and under-researched subgroups including women and the elderly. Her research methods have spanned cognitive experiments, functional neuroimaging, exploration of acquired brain lesions, and behaviour genetic approaches. She is a past-President of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR), and was awarded a CBE in 2020 for services to the study of autism. You can learn more about her work by listening to her interview for The Life Scientific (01/09/2020), BBC Radio 4: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000m5lh

Read Prof Francesca Happé’s research portal profile

Prof Christopher McKevitt (Population Health Sciences)

Professor Christopher McKevitt is Professor of Social Sciences & Health in the School of Life Course and Population Sciences. Research interests include: anthropology of health and illness; qualitative methods; ethnographic methods in applied research; health services research; complex intervention development and evaluation; experiences of stroke and other chronic disease; and user involvement.

Read Prof Christopher McKevitt’s research portal profile

Dr. Miranda Melcher (War Studies)

Miranda Melcher is a teacher, researcher, author, and a Fellow of the HEA. She has recently completed her PhD on post-conflict military reconstruction at King’s College London’s Defence Studies Department. Her pedagogic research and teaching practice focuses primarily on working with neurodiverse students 1:1 and developing and delivering teacher training workshops on inclusive and accessible teaching practices.

Based on her years of teaching online and in person, Miranda wrote Teaching to Include Everyone: A Practical Guide for Online Teaching of Neurodiverse and Disabled Students (September 2020). She provides three overarching principles and practical how-to tips that include examples and explanations for teachers of all kinds. The principles and practices of the guide have been developed into a highly successful workshop, delivered at UK and international universities.

Miranda additionally created a resource to help employees and employers successfully implement neurodiverse workplace accommodations.

Dr Sasha Scambler (Faculty of Dentistry, Oral and Craniofacial Sciences)

Dr Sasha Scambler is a sociologist working in the field of health and healthcare. Her research focuses on the experiences of people living with long term conditions and disability, inequality and the application of social theory to empirical research. She is an editor of the Journal Sociology of Health and Illness and a contributing editor of the British Sociological Association (BSA) affiliated ‘cost of living blog’.

Read Dr Sasha Scambler’s research portal profile.

Thanks go to Michael Murphy (Research Information and Intelligence Specialist, Research Strategy and Development) for helping identify some of the disability research going on at King’s. If you also work on disability research please email diversity@kcl.ac.uk as we would be interested to hear from you.