Within the scope of the Social Justice Project, students in the Department of Gender Studies are organising a panel discussion on the intersections of disabilities with other social markers. As a knowledge exchange, the panel is consists of speakers who work outside of academia in and around the London area. We have invited four panellists – Umber Ghauri, Lucy Webster, Christina Lee, and Kym Oliver – to participate in a discussion about experiences of gender, sexuality, race, class and disability outside the theories of academia, and the implications for social justice work. The aim is to explore these interwoven identities to illuminate what is rarely discussed in our curriculum: the impact of disability onto other social spheres, especially queer and feminist spaces, and vice versa. The panellists will discuss their lived experiences and share their goals. The discussion will culminate in a Q&A session with the audience. There will be a wine reception following the event.
BSL Interpreters and neck loops are provided. For neck loops and other access requirements, please contact c.r.schwarz@lse.ac.uk by Thursday 21st March.
Umber Ghauri
Umber Ghauri is a makeup artist, writer and public speaker. With a passion for celebrating marginalised identities, Umber began their journey with a degree from The Courtauld Institute of Art, quickly moving onto a makeup training course. Combining an understanding of historical and current representation within art and media, Umber realised the role of makeup artist was one of great responsibility where LGBTQ people, disabled people and PoC are underserved.
Christina Lee
Christina Lee is a second-year PhD student in the Department of English at King’s College, London. She has a BA and MA in English literature. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary, cross-cultural applications of the humanities in issues of health and illness and covers areas such as disability studies, illness narratives, the doctor-patient relationship, and social construction of the ill body. Her current PhD project, ‘From Self-cultivation to Self-care: Cross-Cultural Biopolitics in Body-mind Literature’, looks at how meditative practices transform patients’ experiences of illness and empower them in the process of active healing. She is one of the co-founders of Disability + Intersectionality, a reading group based at King’s College London where scholars meet to discuss key texts in critical disability studies and explore how disability intersects with categories such as gender, race, sexuality, and class.
Kym Oliver
“…an unapologetically Black, African AND Caribbean, British, Disabled, Woman with a wheelchair-ish case of Multiple Sclerosis…".
Kym, is dedicated to illuminating her ‘lived experience’ with a long-term condition and the barriers it presents psychologically, emotionally, practically, socially, culturally, structurally & interpersonally. She is a Writer, Speaker, Sex & Dating aficionado, Podcaster, ‘Peer-reviewed Vegan Food Critic’, Professional Cackler, failed Musician hoping for a pity-based comeback, and the 'Official Breasts for the TRIPLE CRIPPLES (a platform by & for People of Colour living with disabilities).
Ironically, she also happens to be a qualified Personal Trainer and Integrative Health Coach, who spends most of her days lying in bed, feeling poorly and promising herself that “tomorrow” will be the day that she eats better & goes to the gym...
Lucy Webster
Lucy is a journalist and producer at BBC Newsnight. She has previously worked for BBC News UK Online and BBC Parliament Online. Since joining the BBC in 2017 on a disability diversity scheme she has specialised in UK politics - and it has kept her busy!
Before the BBC Lucy completed a degree in Politics and International Relations at Warwick University. She won the Guardian's Student Columnist of the Year award in 2014. As a freelance journalist, concentrating on social affairs, she had bylines in the Guardian, New Statesman, BuzzFeed and Prospect magazine.
Lucy has cerebral palsy and is a wheelchair user. She can be found tweeting about the vagaries of being a disabled woman.
Chair Emma Spruce is a Teaching Fellow in Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights. Her research examines the intersections of sexuality, space and place; exploring the movement of sexual politics across scales (from the nation to the neighbourhood), as well as the ways that place and space acquire meaning through narratives of sexuality and gender. In particular, Emma’s work interrogates the way that race, class and sexuality work on each other to govern ‘the right to the city’, challenges sexual progress narratives’ amenability to ideologies of gentrification and urban discipline, and unpacks the spatial and social imaginaries constituted through narratives about changing sexual worlds. As well as engaging critically with dominant sexual narratives, she explores the potential of 'small stories' as a site of critique and a means of fostering intimacy, relating this to strategies of resistance that work again social, political and economic exclusion.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/lse-information/assets/documents/LSE-AccessibilityMap-November2018.pdf
Admission is on a first-come-first-served basis for those with tickets. Not everyone who books uses their ticket, so, to ensure a full house, we allocate more tickets than there are places. We also run returns queues at the events and fill any empty seats with those waiting outside the theatre shortly before the start of the event. This usually means we have a full house without having to turn people away, but there may be occasions when we do have more people than seats available. Please ensure you arrive at least 15 minutes before the start time to avoid disappointment. Please note, tickets are not transferable- if you can't make it, and this means an empty place, then this would be allocated to someone waiting in the returns queue
For most ticketed events some people from the returns queue do get in, but there is no guarantee of entry and the numbers vary from event to event. We always try to keep the returns queue updated on chances of getting in as it nears the start of the event.