On 24 June 2021 (9.00am - 2.00pm BST), Dr Kirsty Liddiard and Living Life to the Fullest Co-Researchers Katy Evans and Sally Whitney will be giving a keynote talk at Critically Exploring Co-Production Approaches: A BSA Regional Postgraduate Forum hosted by Brunel University London.
This interactive virtual forum aims to critically explore the methodological, conceptual, and ethical dimensions of co-production research approaches with and for postgraduate and early career researchers. This event will bring together the multiple voices of those involved in co-production research including academic and non-academic experts and co-researchers to provide a forum for critical reflection, discussion, and knowledge exchange. Postgraduate, early career researchers, and community stakeholders seeking to examine the contested nature of co-production and explore the relevance and application of co-production strategies for their work will benefit from this forum.
Kirsty, Sally and Katy will be talking about the Living Life to the Fullest Project, co-led by iHuman’s Dan Goodley and Katherine Runswick-Cole. The project forged new understandings of the lives, hopes, desires and contributions of children and young people with ‘life-limiting’ or ‘life-threatening’ impairments (hereby LL/LTIs) and their families. In our keynote, we will speak about our approaches to open research, our accountability as researchers in a diverse team, and the ways in which relationships with multiple communities were embedded in our project.
On 12th August 2021 (09:30am - 13:30 Pacific Daylight Time) Dr Kirsty Liddiard will be representing the Living Life to the Fullest team at Disability Rights and Robotics: Developing Co-production Methodologies for the User-centred and Community-centred Design of Robots, as part of RO-MAN 2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication
The aims of the workshop are to:
- Provide an opportunity to develop understanding around co-production methodologies for user and user and community led robotics design that promote disability rights.
- Provide an opportunity to gain understanding of the different contexts of the Global South and Global North for socially just, relevant innovation
- To encourage the formation of international networks for future initiatives.
- To encourage participation, each session will have a discussant facilitating focused dialogue on these objectives.
In our short contribution, we outline the ways in which virtual communication technologies have been central to engaging disabled young people living with life-limiting and life- threatening impairments in research leadership in our ESRC-funded project, Living Life to the Fullest. Throughout the project, we have used online space and myriad social technologies to meaningfully co-produce intimate knowledge of life, death, disability and future in collaboration with young people. We share our co-production toolkit - - to encourage disability justice in research and to uncover the unique ways in which we have enacted co-production through the project. We include the Team’s ideas on how robotics technology could further promote disability justice.
