Breaking Barriers: Disability in the Politics I never expected to find myself advocating for disabled people in politics. In fact, I never expected to find myself in a career which was related to disability at all. When I envisioned my future, I was a teacher or a journalist. My name is Mel, I was born with cerebral palsy, and right now I am a researcher at a UK disability think tank working on an accessible voting project. My PhD in Politics is focusing on disabled political candidates.
My interest in politics started in college when I was 18, eventually leading me to make the decision to do a week’s worth of work experience in an MP’s office as part of my course. It was fascinating to see behind the scenes, and I felt encouraged to try for a political career. I learnt pretty quickly that there was very little in place for disabled young women from working-class backgrounds. I decided that I would get a degree in politics and sociology to learn the skills I needed.
It was around this time that I was beginning to experience more barriers in my transition between adulthood and becoming a university student. I was angry at society’s treatment of disabled people, but what could I do as one individual? I expressed this to a lecturer who would later become my mentor, who told me “take your anger and use it in the right ways”. His words, five years later, would encourage me to keep pushing forward to land my research role and PhD course. I was known in the politics department for my drive to make change, and what one lecturer referred to as my “fiery nature”. I would fight for my access needs and strive to make change.
Incentivised by the advice, I began researching a field of study I had never heard of - Disability Studies. I realised that there were people out there like me, people who wanted to understand why our society approaches disability this way and change it.
A disabled student society member approached me in 2020 about writing for a disabled students’ newsletter they were putting together called Hold the Lift. I agreed, and soon a team of disabled writers were sharing articles about our lived experiences. We even ran several successful campaigns to make change across the university, allowing me to practice my advocacy skills. It could be frustrating, but the experience was invaluable.
Writing about the stigma and discrimination disabled people faced for my dissertation, I realised that if I wanted to write about disability, I needed to have perspectives outside my lived experience and signed up for a master’s degree in Disability Studies.
My master’s degree allowed me to explore disability theories whilst making sense of my own lived experiences. I grew up in a non-disabled family, so to be surrounded by lecturers with disabilities and classmates on a similar journey was an amazing experience for me. I published in academic journals for the first time, I presented my MA thesis research at a conference.
After finishing my master’s degree, I knew I wanted to do a project around disability politics. I spent several months applying to different PhD courses, but with disability being an under researched concept in politics, universities would turn me away. I had one or two amazing offers, but they were not the projects I wanted to do. One was amazing, and I had even registered for the course under a well-renowned disability researcher, but the disability related barriers made it impossible.
If it wasn’t rejections I faced, it was barriers to my learning; funding, disability related issues. It was hard to maintain my resilience with each month that passed, but I knew what I wanted to study was so desperately important. As I searched for PhDs or research positions, I reached out to the disability think tank I now work for, hoping that even a volunteer position would be available.
For months, it seemed like nothing would happen. I began doubting myself and wondering if I had made a mistake when a PhD course got back to me. I had an interview soon after with the people who would become my supervisory team, and now I’m here. The policy centre was able to offer me a researcher position on a highly important disability voting project, and I am being approached by organisations and individuals about disability politics. I am in a place I never would have imagined back in 2018 as that college student on work experience. If you had told me back then what I have achieved now, six years later, I would have laughed.
If there is anything I’ve learnt from my experience, resilience, persistence, self-advocacy and (occasionally) pure stubbornness are crucial. It is so important to surround yourself with a person or people who see your potential and help guide you towards it. Sometimes things don’t work out, and that’s fine, the hardest part is keeping going…but you should.
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