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Our latest research paper explores how young disabled people can be researchers, designers and makers. 

• We bring together different theories, methods and ways of thinking: critical disability studies (which centres disabled peoples’ experiences as crucial to creating knowledge and understanding), co-production (where everyone is involved in research design and creation), and makerspace methods (using shared spaces and tools for making things together).

• We think that makerspaces, co-production, and critical disability studies are aligned.

• We base our argument on a research project which explored disabled young people’s aspirations of new technologies, working with 9 student co-researchers from a Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) school.

• We ran a series of makerspace workshops within the school and found that it's vital to start with the belief that young disabled people have the capacity to think and do brilliant things.

• Making things together can be really positive, support collaboration and make for better research. We are all interconnected and build upon the strengths of each other.

• By bringing together making, co-production and critical disability studies, we not only create a process that celebrates capacity, diversity, and difference, but promote it.

• We think that this paper offers new understanding in putting makerspaces at the heart of critical disability studies and encourages makerspaces practitioners to centre disability in their spaces, ethos and activities.

White, L., Buxton, A., Liddiard, K., Goodley, D., Qarni, S., Jansen, E., Gordon, H., & Gillard, S. (2025). Disabled Young People as Researchers, Designers and Makers: Aligning Makerspaces, Co-production and Critical Disability Studies. Journal of Disability Studies in Education (published online ahead of print 2025). Read the full paper: https://doi.org/10.1163/25888803-bja10039

Abstract

This paper considers the research possibilities afforded by disabled young people as researchers, designers and makers. We centre an interdisciplinary research project that sought to bring together critical disability studies, co-production and makerspace methods when exploring disabled young people’s aspirations in developing new

automated technologies. This emerges from makerspace workshops in collaboration with 9 student co-researchers at a send school in the UK. From these workshops, we learnt lessons about the possibilities of starting from assumptions of capacity with disabled young people, promoting the affirmative qualities of making, and the role of interdependencies when researching and making together. Our workshop encounters demonstrate examples of the significant theoretical and methodological possibilities that emerge when bringing together making as a collaborative research practice within critical disability studies. Our workshop examples illuminate the entanglement between makerspace methods, co-production and critical disability studies. These alignments of affirmative methods and theory make for not only an affirmative process of capacity, diversity and difference but a celebration of it. As such, this paper offers a novel contribution in centralising makerspaces within critical disability studies, and the value of disability as the driving force of inquiry within collaborative, creative and maker methods.

Learn more about the wider Reimagining Trustworthy Autonomous Systems with Young People project here

Watch our short video about the project