Guest: Professor Bethan Evans

My guest today is Bethan Evans, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Liverpool. Bethan and her colleagues are doing really interesting research on the experiences of academics who are navigating working in academia whilst living with chronic health conditions.

In her paper titled "Being left behind beyond recovery: ‘crip time’ and chronic illness in neoliberal academia" and in her work on the Exhaustion Economy, Bethan and her colleagues argue that ‘crip time’ is a useful lens through which to frame the cognitive, psychological and emotional struggle of academics living with energy limiting conditions.

We talk in detail about the structural particularities of academic work and what makes it especially inhospitable to people living with chronic conditions. But we also discuss the way it's possible to adapt and find sustainable ways of working.

This is a timely conversation given the parlous state of DEI discourses in the world of work. So, I am grateful to have this opportunity for a more nuanced discussion about the importance of accommodating bodies of all kinds into the workplace.

References:

Evans, B., Allam, A., Bê, A., Hale, C., Rose, M., & Ruddock, A. (2024). Being left behind beyond recovery: ‘crip time’ and chronic illness in neoliberal academia. Social & Cultural Geography, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2024.2410262

https://exhaustioneconomy.uk/

Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, queer, Crip. Indiana University Press.

Mingus, M. (2011, May 5). Access Intimacy: The Missing Link. Leaving Evidence. https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/

Samuels, E. (2017). Six ways of looking at crip time. Disability Studies Quarterly, 37(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v37i3.5824

Chronic pain is pain as one of the most prominent causes of disability worldwide. In England alone, around 15.5 million people (34% of the population) experience chronic pain and about 12% struggling to take part in daily activities, including work.

When we think about the impact of chronic pain on our ability to work, as researchers we’ve tended to measure the direct effects on productivity in the workplace, but for people living with persistent pain the qualitative impacts extend far beyond this.

My guest today is Dr Martin Stevens, a research fellow from Leeds University. He and research colleagues at Aberdeen University have been exploring how we can better understand the impacts of chronic pain in the workplace. QUantifying the Impact of Chronic pain on engagement in paid work, or The QUICK Study for short, is a research project that has worked closely with people living with chronic pain to develop a survey instrument that captures the multi-dimensional impacts of pain at work.

From the fluctuating nature of pain, to impaired cognition, to disclosure and support for job modifications, to the effects on stamina and the ability to recharge – this work is arming researchers with a finely tuned instrument to tell a more robust story about the impacts of chronic pain at work from those who experience it first-hand.

Our conversation also highlights the importance of involving people with lived experience into the research process from the ground level. Patient and Public Involvement (or PPI), as it’s known in the UK, has become a requirement of public funding for healthcare research, but the complexities of how we do this work as researchers is not something we hear discussed so I was glad we had the opportunity to talk in-depth about this process.

Links

https://www.abdn.ac.uk/iahs/academic/epidemiology/our-research/studies-list/quick/

https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/74/Supplement_1/0/7707348

https://journals.lww.com/pain/fulltext/2024/07000/do_current_methods_of_measuring_the_impact_of.7.aspx

https://medicinehealth.leeds.ac.uk/staff/12305/dr-martin-stevens

https://bsky.app/profile/martstevens.bsky.social

HOST: Peter Ghin

Guest: Catherine Hale (Researcher, Kings College London)

On this weeks pod I speak with the ever-erudite Catherine Hale about the research she is leading at Kings College London which explores the barriers to designing flexible jobs for people with disability - specifically people with fluctuating energy limiting conditions (FELCS).

This conversation packs a punch. We dig beneath the high-level discourses of inclusion and the social model of disability, to understand what the research reveals about the practical obstacles to creating what Catherine calls - FlexPlus Jobs. This translates to real flexibility about how, when, and where work can be done.

We also unpick the potential downside of job flexibility, particularly the erosion of security that can come with ‘piecework’, and the problematic nature of over-hyping disability entrepreneurship.

REFERENCES

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/flexible-job-design-people-with-fluctuating-disabilities

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/can-flexible-job-design-help-people-with-fluctuating-disabilities

CONTACT

info@culturalvalue.com.au.