The Depathologising University

It has been argued that the university needs depathologising, a radical rethink and reorientation of the university’s relationship with disability. This paper offers an original affirmative proposition: that the university is already depathologising. Inspired by disabled people’s activism and scholarship, we explore the ways in which academics, researchers and research professional colleagues are depathologising the disablist and ableist university. We reflect on our practices as principal investigators and research leaders of three funded research projects using novel composite conversations (a unique methodological form of experimental writing) and explore (i) pushing back at university bureaucracy towards co-production; (ii) critically appropriating the performative university and (iii) enabling access as colleagues. Depathologisation invites us to pause, to meditate and to significantly reimagine the university. And those of us who work in the university are the university, and we all have work to do.