Looking Back When Moving Forward: Researching Sites of Former Disability Institutions

Jack Kelly, Leigh Creighton, Phillippa Carnemolla () and Linda Steele
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Jack Kelly: School of Built Environment, Faculty of Design Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia
Leigh Creighton: Independent Researcher, Newcastle, NSW 2300, Australia
Phillippa Carnemolla: School of Built Environment, Faculty of Design Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia
Linda Steele: Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia

Social Sciences, 2024, vol. 13, issue 10, 1-17

Abstract: This article discusses an inclusive research program where colleagues and co-researchers (with intellectual disability) guide and inform future research practice to ensure research is targeted to areas of significance and relevance to them. The research program is about sites of former disability institutions. Many people with intellectual disability in Australia were segregated and forced to live in disability institutions until deinstitutionalisation efforts became mainstream in the late 20th Century. We are a team of four people based in New South Wales, Australia. Our team includes disability advocates and researchers who have contributed to a program of research exploring connections between sites of former disability institutions and contemporary disability rights. In this article, we reflect on conversations about our research undertaken so far and where the research goes from here. We explore five pillars of action informing how research relating to disability institutions can progress: 1. Current use: research exploring erasure of experiences of institutionalisation communicated through educational resources and maps about current use of sites of former disability institutions; 2. Reparative planning processes: research developing frameworks for alternative approaches to planning and heritage processes supporting alternative uses of former sites of disability institutions; 3. Official recognition and redress: research exploring perspectives on governments formally recognising and remedying experiences of people with disability who were institutionalised; 4. Community-led repair and remembrance: research identifying practices for both celebrating advocates with disability and reckoning with and repairing familial and social bonds broken through institutionalisation; 5. Community-inclusive practices: research exploring endurance of institutional practices in disability accommodation in community settings. These five pillars are underpinned by three foundational layers: advancing disability human rights; reckoning with intersections between disability institutions and settler colonialism, other dynamics of oppression, and eugenics; and using inclusive practices.

Keywords: disability institutions; disability activism; disability history; human rights; redress; reparative planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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