“Embracing disability as a deeply intellectual source of authority can help us redefine and unpack how we live and work together differently in the university.”
These are the words of Dan Goodley, a professor at the University of Sheffield.
I discovered Professor Goodley while nosing through the Instagram feed of the British Academy, which received £339,073,050 from taxpayers between 2021-25.
The British Academy describes itself as “the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences.” Unsurprisingly for subjects increasingly recognised as complete nonsense, its output is gobbledygook upon gobbledygook - Goodley being a prime example. In the full clip, he adds: “Disability might feed into a wider practice of what I term ‘depathologisation’.”
In turn I will show you further terrible examples of British Academy research, but I thought you might want to know a bit more Goodley, who has been involved in numerous taxpayer-funded studies.
According to his research profile, “Dan is interested in theorising and challenging the conditions of disablism (the social, political, cultural and psycho-emotional exclusion of people with physical, sensory and/or cognitive impairments) and ableism (the contemporary ideals on which the able, autonomous, productive citizen is based).”
Currently he is working on research projects funded by the Leverhulme Trust (another rabbit hole for another time) and the Wellcome Trust, which received £105,998,100 from taxpayers between 2020-24.
Note: PI means “Principal Investigator” and CoI/ Co-Is means “Co-Investigator”:
He has also had grants from the UKRI via its subsidiaries the Economic and Social Research Council…
…Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council…
… and Research England:
According to Claude (my beautiful AI assistant), the total government funding for projects Goodley has led or worked on works out at approximately £2,443,528:
UK government/public body funding (ESRC, EPSRC, Research England, DIUS):
ESRC — £731,114 (Humanising Healthcare, 2022–25)
EPSRC/UKRI TAS Hub — £147,414 (2022–23)
University of Sheffield/Research England — £17,000 (2022)
ESRC — £443,000 (Living Life to the Fullest, 2017–20)
ESRC — £425,000 (Big Society, 2013–15)
ESRC — £255,000 (Does Every Child Matter, 2008–10)
Prime Minister’s Initiative 2/DIUS — £40,000 (2008–10)
ESRC — £300,000 (Parents, Professionals and Disabled Babies, 2003–06)
ESRC — £85,000 (Self-advocacy, 1998–2001)
If you also count the European Social Fund grant (£425,000, “Jobs not Charity,” 2003–05) — EU public funds rather than UK taxpayer money directly, but publicly-sourced — that brings it to £2,868,528.
Then there’s:
Leverhulme Trust — £489,867
Wellcome Trust (WAARC) — £1,007,109
Wellcome Trust Discretionary Award — £2.9m
SCOPE — £51,500
BAAF — £8,500
I wonder if Goodley’s taxpayer-funded projects make any more sense than the sentence “Embracing disability as a deeply intellectual source of authority can help us redefine and unpack how we live and work together differently in the university”.
Sociology is magical thinking. Marxism 101. Pseudo-intellectual masturbation for people too stupid to cope with proper science that requires maths & logic rather than feelings & identity politics.
The recipients of these grants are indeed reprehensible, but what I want to know is; who is responsible for deciding to give it to them?
I'm guessing that it is difficult enough to extract this extraordinary waste of taxpayer or trust money when we are constantly told borrowing is too high, and that the details of the chain of responsibility is even more opaque, but we need to get MPs to know what is done in their name, and for opposition parties to work on a plan to cure this dreadful flesh-consuming disease.