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Disability and Medieval Studies: Then and Now (Lee & Doherty-Harrison)

  • Writer: mmapodcast1
    mmapodcast1
  • Jun 15
  • 31 min read

Updated: Jun 24



Medievalists with Disabilities was founded in 2017. Since then, the organization has organized annual panels at the largest UK medieval conference, Leeds International Medieval Conference (Leeds IMC), and has just published an edited collection of essays from the first five roundtables: Towards an Accessible Academy: Perspectives from Disabled Medievalists. Contributors to Towards an Accessible Academy describe their lived experience of disability and how this intersects with the discipline of medieval studies, embracing both the challenges and the joy this can bring. This volume provides a unique perspective on the state of accessibility within the field and in the university environment more broadly. While offering real-life testimonies of disability in the academy, many chapters also include practical advice on best practices in supporting disabled scholars and students, as well as how the authors feel connected to the medieval sources they study.


In this podcast episode, Dr. Alex R. A. Lee and Dr. Hope Doherty-Harrison chat with contributors to the volume, reflecting on individual experiences to which listeners may relate, sounding a call to action for all medievalists to actively practice allyship, and providing clear examples of how we might implement the advice given by contributors to improve the academy’s accessibility.


Please be aware that this episode contains mentions of suicide (22:50–22:55, 23:33–22:50, 24:03–25:28) and of surgery/surgical wounds (28:34–28:36, 30:40–32:00, 36:42–36:54).


Dr. Alex R. A. Lee is a medieval historian who works on the intersection between popular religion and epidemic disease in late medieval Italy. She currently teaches Liberal Studies and Writing at New York University London.


Dr. Hope Doherty-Harrison is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, working on a book about portrayals of Judas in medieval literature and iconography. Her first book, Love and Anti-Judaism in Medieval English Romance: Typologies of Violence and Desire, was published by Manchester University Press in 2025.


Other contributors to this episode include Alicia Spencer-Hall, Matthew McCall, Edward Mills, Amy Louise Morgan, and E. R. P. Champion. Jude Seal’s chapter is read by Matt Griffin. The anonymous contributor’s chapter is read by Will Howard.


Further reading:


Episode transcript (Note that a time-dynamic transcript is accessible if you access the episode through free podcasting platforms such as Apple Podcasts or Spotify):


Alexandra Lee: [00:00:00] Welcome to our episode about disability, medieval studies and academia. Hi, I'm Alexandra Lee. I work on the intersection between popular religion and epidemic disease in late medieval Europe. And I currently teach liberal studies at New York University London.

Hope Doherty-Harrison: And I'm Hope Doherty Harrison. Currently at the University of Edinburgh, I work on medieval gender and anti Judaism in iconography and literature. And I was diagnosed with autism in 2016.

Alexandra Lee: In this podcast episode, you're going to hear from the authors of our recent book "towards an accessible academy," some reading from their chapters and some in conversation with us.

Hope Doherty-Harrison: Alex, would you explain the history of medievalists with disabilities, and particularly how you approach the definition of disability?

Alexandra Lee: Absolutely. So [00:01:00] the whole premise of this book was born out of some round tables that we began hosting at Leeds International Medieval Conference, or IMC, as you'll hear that some of our contributors refer to it. Medievals with Disabilities was founded in 2017 in the print room Cafe at UCL by me and Alicia Spencer Hall, who you'll also hear from in this podcast.

We felt that there just wasn't enough representation of us as disabled medievalists, and we run this annual round table at our biggest UK conference every year, and this book is the culmination of the first five years of round tables and all of the conversations that we've been having.

In terms of disability, we have always defined disability from a very broad standpoint. We have sought to include, rather than exclude and do not require that people identify as disabled or have a diagnosis to come under our umbrella. We don't require disclosure of conditions, but welcome all people who [00:02:00] want to discuss disability in higher education. It's especially important that these conversations include allies wherever possible so that they break beyond the bounds of disabled people just talking to each other.

This is in part one of the aims of our book and of our podcast today: to be loud about the often taboo subjective disability in higher education, and for us as disabled people and medievalists within academia to share our experiences.

Hope Doherty-Harrison: We'd just like to provide our listeners with a content note. In this podcast, there will be mentions of suicide and some discussion of surgery and surgical wounds. You can check the show notes for the timestamps for these topics if you want to skip them. We hope you enjoy our conversations, and thank you for listening.

Alexandra Lee: Our next interviewee is Alicia Spencer Hall, who is an honorary senior fellow at University College London. Their research interests include [00:03:00] medieval hagiography, disability, gender, digital culture, and film and media studies, and her collection, "disability and sanctity in the Middle Ages," co-edited with Leah Pope Parker and Stephanie Grace Patinos was published with Amsterdam University Press in Spring 2025. Welcome, Alicia. Thanks so much for joining us.

Alicia Spencer Hall: Oh, thanks Alex. And thanks for this opportunity to talk to you and present my research in this way.

Alexandra Lee: So I think you're gonna kick us off with a reading from your chapter, so when you're ready, you can take it away.

Oh, thank you. I feel,

Alicia Spencer Hall: yeah. Drum roll please. Okay academic time: days lost in the library, late nights of writing, strictly scheduled teaching hours, office hours, semester and term. Institutional time: promotion cycles, funding cycles, complaint procedures, access requests. Bodily time: menstrual cycles, pregnancy, sleep cycles, exhaustion, hunger. Mortality itself. Crip time: the times of disability, a kind of bodily time, which structures and is structured [00:04:00] by the lived experience of disability and the TimeScapes to which disability gives access. Chronic time: a specific inflection of crip time. The predictably unpredictable temporal landscape of living with chronic illnesses.

Finally, I've come to discern how these times and their uneasy intersections radically structure my own life. Asynchrony, according to Carolyn din Shaw, is the instant in which "different timeframes or temporal regimes collide in a single system of now." This stands in stark opposition to the teleology, which structures higher education in a neoliberal context, including both student learning and scholarly career progression. No matter if they love literature and value the arts, students' future employability demands STEM subjects. Or so the neoliberal rhetoric goes. Teachers must craft their lessons according to the rigid terms of learning outcomes, regardless of the needs and responses of their students in that specific classroom. And scholars, especially those who are early career, are [00:05:00] told to sacrifice their present. No time for a life, a family and certainly no time for a malfunctioning body in the hopes of that tantalizing prize ever disappearing from view: job security with genuine work life balance. Asynchronous experiences for some are precisely that: experiences. Lived episodes with the beginning, middle, and end. No matter how many temporal modes are present in the ever unfolding middle.

But some of us do not just have an experience or two of asynchrony and instead live with a condition of being asynchronous as a mode of being in the world. That is our lives are lived in other kinds of time outside a normative or dominant time scheme.

This is crip time to be sure. Such asynchrony is integral to my working praxes as a medievalist concerned with dismantling rigid temporal demarcations, which cleave the past from the present. As a scholar, then I've already always been enmeshed in Crip Temporalities, if only I'd had the vocabulary to [00:06:00] articulate it.

Disabled scholars living in asynchronous Crip time, whether we like it or not, must reckon with the dominant temporal regimes which orient our profession. At best, we negotiate workable compromises, stealing time here and there. We might need extra time, but we cannot make time. Our need for endless temporal flexibilities is in fact inflexible.

And so we are systemically excluded from academic cultures, promotion rounds, and funding opportunities. Disabled scholars navigate the academy in a chronic state of asynchrony. Even as those the academy disables in this way are typically only temporarily disabled, these transitory moments of communion offer a potential catalyst for the creation of a more inclusive, more diverse academy.

Alexandra Lee: That's so powerful. Thank you so much, Alicia. I think that gives a really good kind of overview of what your chapter is about.

Alicia Spencer Hall: Oh, thank you.

Alexandra Lee: And so now let's dive into a couple of questions. So, Alicia, if you could tell us where you got the idea [00:07:00] from for writing this chapter.

Alicia Spencer Hall: Thanks for that question, Alex. I feel it's like opening a, a very large can of disabled worms. Um, pretty much my entire experience as being a disabled scholar and yes, working in medieval studies, but just generally in academia, has been about navigating these shifting and conflicting time zones in which I find myself. So really it's a chapter that is very much kind of embodied knowledge and comes from my own cripistemology.

I'd say. In a way it felt almost banal typing it out because it's just sort of what I've thought and dealt with every day for as long as I've been a scholar.

Hope Doherty-Harrison: Could you just unpack that term, cripistemology for us?

Alicia Spencer Hall: Oh, yeah. It's one of those rather advanced words for something that I think many disabled people know instinctively.

Mm-hmm. It just means the kinds of knowledge made possible by the experience of disability and having non-normative body mind. So it's the ways in which disability allows you to know differently, know otherwise, and therefore [00:08:00] allows us to move in the world and imagine a world in different ways.

Hope Doherty-Harrison: That's really helpful. Thanks, Alicia. I was wondering if you could speak a bit about your feelings around disclosure, as that seems to be a really key feature in your chapter.

Alicia Spencer Hall: Oh, it does. I mean, I must confess there, a little bit of me feels very vulnerable with this chapter in the world. This is my most personal piece of academic work that I've ever allowed to see the light of day. And part of that is because I disclose both my own condition, chronic illness and, but I talk about much more in depth the kind of day to day behind the scenes of my, my Crip life. And I do that for a couple of reasons. Because it's a political action for me. If you look at the rates of disclosure of who in academia self-identifies as disabled, it is vanishingly low.

And yet we know that's not actually, you know, the accurate picture of how many scholars are disabled. And it's important for me with the relative privileges I have, you know, I have an invisible [00:09:00] disability. Um, I'm white, I pass as cishet, for example, for me to be able to kind of bear the brunt of the politics of disclosure.

And I disclose also to make it more normal. You know, disabled people exist, get over it. Disabled people do scholarship. Get over it.

Alexandra Lee: Yeah, I think I have a lot of similar feelings on that. My next question, Alicia, is what does medieval studies mean to you?

Alicia Spencer Hall: Wow. I feel like we should have a little like love affair montage. Me and Maddie. Maddie is Alex. Simply put, it means a way of rethinking what we socio culturally, but also me specifically take as inevitable as the status quo, as the way things have always been in the present. Turning to the medieval past lets us think about the ways things are constructed, the ways that ideas shift, the ways that context matters.

And if we are talking specifically [00:10:00] about disability, it means livability, survivability, to turn to the medieval past and find disabled people as Crip ancestors, as people that show that we have always existed and perhaps we've existed in different ways with different understandings of ourselves, even of others, but we have always been here and we will always carve out a space for a life worth living as disabled people.

Alexandra Lee: Yeah, really seeing those threads stretching through from the medieval period to us today.

Alicia Spencer Hall: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's what's so great about the collection Alex is it, it allows us modern Crips to also talk back and talk with our medieval ancestors, but do justice to the our only daily life as well. And that dialogue, I think, is so powerful in letting us think differently about what kind of futures we can build in the academy in our personal lives.

Alexandra Lee: Definitely. And I think one final question to wrap up, if you could give us one key takeaway from your chapter, please.

Alicia Spencer Hall: Oh, [00:11:00] okay. Please, somebody print this on a t-shirt: time is a resource to which not everyone has equal access.

Alexandra Lee: I think that's a fantastic way to finish this interview. Thank you so much, Alicia.

Matt: This is a reading from Chapter six: "access, accessibility Attitude and Structural Ableism" by Jude Seal, which focuses on active accessibility as a continual process. Jude is a postdoctoral researcher currently working on disability in medieval English miracle literature. They also work on the archeology of medical intervention. The following examples are just a few of those which have been gathered by academics with disabilities over the years since the first Medievalists with Disabilities Roundtable at the IMC in 2018.

These problems are vast, but there are strategies and changes which can help alleviate the worst of their effects. Here are four suggestions to the Academy more broadly and to disabled academics ourselves.

[00:12:00] One: for institutions to stop showcasing disabled people only to promote their levels of student support if they don't intend to follow through on those promises. Remember, it's hypocritical to continually promote disabled inclusion in the student body if you don't apply the same consideration to your staff, whether they be teaching, researching, doing administration, or any other jobs working with these students. To us as disabled people within the academy consider how we can promote support structures which work.

Two: in terms of institutional policymaking, self declaration policies should not have a statute of limitations. It should not be the case that your treatment depends on the point at which you disclosed whatever issue it is when it comes to your health. To us as disabled people, we need to make more noise about the issues that we face. Sometimes this can be outright. Sometimes it can simply be a subtle change in culture. For example, cartoonist Hannah Ensa created the [00:13:00] positive logo as a subtle change to the standard wheelchair image of an empty wheelchair on a blue background used to designate facilities for disabled people. Ensa's image shows a wheelchair user sitting in their chair with their arms above their head in a joyful gesture and a smile on their face. This makes a small but powerful statement, which can make a real difference to how people approach such matters.

Three: to institutions, take account of the fact that disabled people do not get additional time to do all the things that they have to do because of their disability. Unfortunately, when it comes to time travel, disabled people are traveling in the same direction at the same rate as everyone else. Accordingly, we need to account for the fact that students, ECRs and others who have health issues of any type may need more time and need adjustments. These are rights, not suggestions. To us as disabled people, hold the line on this as much as you can without compromising your health. This is challenging, [00:14:00] but the more that we do this, the more change we can affect.

The final change is one which, while simple, encompasses many areas of academic life and life itself. It is a way in which everyone can make a difference to build a better academy and change society, not just for the benefit of disabled and atypical people, but for everyone. Three simple words: be more kind.

If we can all do that, we can achieve far more than if we simply submit to the status quo, to broken models and an inherent structural ableism. All we need to do is be more kind.

Hope Doherty-Harrison: Now we'll hear from Edward Mills whose chapter in the volume is called "autism lite: Neurodivergence and the pre-modern world."

Edward Mills: Questions of retrospective diagnosis and anachronism, so whether it's productive or even appropriate to pronounce historical [00:15:00] individuals as neurodivergent, as autistic, or as having autistic traits, inevitably take a position on a fundamental methodological dispute, one that Monica Green has neatly described as the historian's dilemma.

The tension between an emic approach where, quote, "our task is to reconstruct the world as historical participants perceived it." Or an etic one where we might endeavor to quote, "use the methods and categories of modern science to find out what really happened." Given the lack of any frame of reference for what we might call medieval neurodivergence, it would appear that labeling pre-modern individuals as unambiguously autistic or neurodivergent is a task best left, unattempted, ill-informed at best and actively dangerous at worst.

These perspectives, however, are unsatisfactory in one respect. In [00:16:00] emphasizing the Alterity, the difference of the Middle Ages, they run the risk of neglecting the continuity of existence that the neurodiversity movement has worked to emphasize. So how can we recognize and acknowledge the fact that autistic and neurodivergent people by any definition existed in the Middle Ages while still respecting and understanding the very different worldviews that informed how they were seen and how they saw themselves?

Hope Doherty-Harrison: Thank you so much, Edward, for that glimpse into your chapter. My first question I wanted to ask you is, where did the idea for your chapter come from? Why did you decide to write this essay?

Edward Mills: That's a, a good question. Hope. And I suppose it was the confluence really of a few things happening almost all at once. For a while, I'd been writing a little bit about my experience from autism, from a very [00:17:00] personal perspective in a way that is similar to, but not nearly as developed or I would say well thought out as the points you make in your chapter in the volume, Hope. But it was around 2022, 2023 that I decided to put something in for Neurodiversity Celebration Week, which is, as I'm sure many of our listeners will know, a national event that aims to celebrate and amplify neurodivergent voices.

Specifically, I decided to try and put something in that brought together two of my, you might say, special interests, medieval studies more generally, and autism as a field of inquiry. Then I got a cold, so I ended up not being able to do it as part of the week itself, but I was very fortunate to be able to retool it and to give a talk called, somewhat bombastically, the Autistic Middle Ages, to the wonderfully named REASON special interest group "researchers and students on neurodivergence" in Exeter and remotely as [00:18:00] well, uh, to a number of other friends and colleagues around the, the southwest of the UK where I'm based. And it was around that point after I had had done that talk that I thought I might be able to develop it in some way and saw the call for papers for this volume, which is of course now out.

And uh, I was very fortunate to be able to put those together and to really workshop a lot of the ideas with yourself and with Alex, the other editor, as I wrote the chapter.

Hope Doherty-Harrison: Thank you so much, Edward. It's wonderful to hear about all of the different experiences that fed into the development of your essay and especially the involvement of Neurodivergent Celebration Week and the REASON group.

My second question for you would be, what does the term disability and the intersection with medieval studies or academia more broadly mean to you?

Edward Mills: That's a difficult topic to answer in a, in a podcast, I think, but certainly from my experience as in, in case you, you couldn't guess, [00:19:00] uh, an autistic academic, i'd say that all three of these, these things, disabilities, medieval, studies and academia, are defined to a very significant extent by the people who are in them. The neurodivergent community in the southwest, in Exeter, at the University of Exeter, is a very welcoming and nonjudgmental one, and likewise, medieval studies in academia certainly can be that as well.

As you say in your chapter, there are certainly instances where that's not the case, where people's experience of academia and of medieval studies is one where they may not be made always to feel immediately welcome, but I think it's also important to recognize the work that's being done in the opposite direction.

I don't think I would've got to the point in my career where I am now without the help and support of a lot of people who recognized in some way that my brain works a little bit differently, and who didn't rush to judgment on that, [00:20:00] and who decided to work with that rather than trying to force me into a particular box.

So I think in answering the question of what those three things mean to me, it's the people who practice medieval studies, academic work, and disability activism more general, that make all of those areas and importantly, I think make them work.

Hope Doherty-Harrison: Thank you so much, Edward. I completely agree with the need to acknowledge both the limitations, but also the acceptance and joy that we can find in our field and experience.

So my final question to you is if you could pick just one key takeaway from your chapter, what would it be?

Edward Mills: Probably that the seemingly disparate disciplines of neurodivergent studies, and if you like, the neuro humanities more generally, and medieval studies can go together. I'm not saying that they [00:21:00] always should go together. Obviously Neurodivergence is one lens among many that medievals use to look at their texts. But my point here, I think, is that it should be a lens that we are not afraid to deploy. I talk about a few different cases in my chapter, mostly about what you might loosely call fictional individuals. So I'm a bit provocative, I think perhaps surrounding Lancelot. And I know that the, the terminology of "autism-like" is not one that will necessarily sit well with everybody. But hopefully if, if my chapter starts conversations around this, even if it's people pulling apart what I say and pointing out inconsistencies, in fact, especially if it's people pointing out inconsistencies, then hopefully I'll have done something that I can be proud of and that has made something of a, a difference to the critical conversation, so to speak.

I'm quite keen for the two ideas to [00:22:00] be brought together again in the future. And I'm particularly keen, if you like, to see what happens when you take autism or neurodivergence, uh, medieval studies, chuck them in a blender, whiz them around for a few thousand words and see what glorious technicolour smoothie emerges from that.

Hope Doherty-Harrison: Thank you so much, Edward. I love that way of putting it that you've finished with there. And I have no doubt that will help to grow the conversation.

Edward Mills: Thank you. And I'm sure that the Autism Technicolor smoothie will be available from all good supermarkets in about a year's time.

Hope Doherty-Harrison: Thank you so much.

William Howard: This is a reading from chapter four, "A Self-Harmer and Suicidal Plans: my experience as a PhD student by an anonymous contributor who works as a heritage professional." I have now had a little bit of time to look at things retrospectively. I have asked questions of myself and of the wider situation, many of which are un answerable. If I wasn't so focused on my PhD, would I have [00:23:00] been able to process what was going on a lot better?

Most likely. My head was so full of everything going on and the pressure of an ever looming deadline, I couldn't deal with anything else. One thing I'm absolutely certain of, despite the many upheavals at several stages along my PhD journey, is how lucky I was with my supervisors. Without them, there would've been no chance of getting my PhD completed.

More importantly, without them, I would've totally fallen apart and I would've fallen into the dark pit with very little chance of coming out alive. For that alone, i'm truly grateful. I would also like to give a shout out to my university generally. 'cause of my supervisors, the sign posting, a quick response from the student support and thereafter the counselor, I actually survived. I don't know if I was going to or not. From my experience the university has been fantastic on that front. As of right now, in a week's time, I'll be standing in front of my peers and supervisors at my graduation ceremony. I have a couple of physical scars and certainly some mental ones. But both can be covered as I stand [00:24:00] in my graduation robes. Was I the only PhD candidate having suicidal thoughts? A survey by Hazel et al undertaken in 2021 says I clearly wasn't. 3,352 phD students from institutions from across the UK were surveyed along with a comparison group part of the study. Over 40% of PhD students were found to meet the criteria for moderate to severe depression compared to the control group. With 33% considered as having a high risk of suicide, 40% of PhD students were found to believe experiencing mental health problems was normal. 41% reported that their PhD colleagues had mental health problems. The conclusion of the survey states that a significant proportion of DRS or considered at high risk of.

The Office for National Statistics does seem to have a silver lining as a percentage of suicides in students has dropped over the last few years. In 2019 to 2020 per a hundred thousand student deaths, three had died from suicide in 2016-17 The figure was [00:25:00] 4.6. Many other areas of the population, suicide rates for both undergraduates and postgraduates are significantly higher in male than female populations.

While the official statistics show the suicide rates of students are relatively low and currently falling, they did not show the anxiety and deep depression that comes with studying. Where we are now: it has been several months since the final edits of my PhD were accepted. I may still have a couple of permanent scars on my left arm, but I think I'm in a very different situation to where I was when everything was falling apart.

I think the most important difference is that I can look forward. My world is no longer defined by the deadline date of my PhD and the vague and at times seemingly futile hope that I would pass. Am I still recovering? Yes, but while I don't know what the future has in store in the long term, I can actually see that there is a future.

I've applied for a few jobs and I'm starting one in a few weeks time. What's gone before is part of my life story. Another person would perhaps have [00:26:00] found themselves going a different path due to even the slightest difference in circumstances. So there cannot be a one size fits all solution.

Despite this, it might be worth a few words to say what helped and what didn't for me, I don't what made me say to my supervisors I was struggling., I suspect they knew things weren't really going well, even if not to the full extent, I was ready to say something. They were ready to listen. If I could ask any PhD supervisor or to be honest, any university tutor, anything in relation to my experience, it is these few basic things.

First, if someone needs to talk, give them space to do so. Be aware of what your institution can offer in support of students who are going down a dark path, such as a counseling service or a peer group to offload to. For institutions, remember that people have limits. Ensure there are support systems in place and that people know how to access them.

Some institutions have incredible reputations to uphold and have strict rules of when things need to be [00:27:00] completed by, but also remember circumstances change and sometimes there needs to be a little slack in the system. For PhD candidates, when choosing your supervisors, yes, academic qualities and experience are really important considerations, but so is their ability to remember there is more to life than a piece of paper saying PhD. I, you should also remember the same. Life can throw some major curve balls. It could be a global pandemic, it could be a failed marriage or something completely different. Whatever it is, there's a chance you might need to take your foot off the academic pedal, even if it's just for a short while.

Make sure you have at least one person to offload to, to prevent things building up and ultimately overwhelming you. Be honest, not just to your supervisors or friends, but most importantly to yourself. If you're lying to yourself about how things are going, it's extremely difficult to help or should things go south.

Alexandra Lee: Our next speaker is Matthew McCall, who is a museums and [00:28:00] heritage professional and freelance researcher based in Liverpool in the uk. He's currently content and display lead for National Museums Liverpool's Waterfront Transformation Project. Thanks so much for joining us today, Matt.

Matt McCall: Oh no. Alex, thank you so much for having me. Really excited to be here. And just also thank you for all of your flexibility and your kindness, like throughout the creation of this book. Obviously on several occasions I had to ask for extensions due to, uh, well due to needing surgery. So that was just wonderful that the ethos of the project shined through in the Praxis as well.

Alexandra Lee: Absolutely. I mean, this is the whole point of the project is to showcase how we can just be kind. Like that's one of our key takeaways, and I'm so pleased that that's meant everything has worked for you. I think you have a chapter section that you'd like to read out to start with.

Matt McCall: Much like readings which privilege other marginalized non-academic identities, attendance to the presence of disabled people in the Middle Ages reminds us that we have been here a very long time indeed, and are an inextricable part of the world, which [00:29:00] our discipline seeks to better understand. All of that is not to be as naive as to suggest the issues of both institutional and literal inaccessibility will melt away if we simply point to enough disabled bodies in medial texts, nor to switch inquiries, seek to flatten the complex identities and diverse lived realities of those with disabilities into a one size fits all category. Rather, I'm advocating for a medieval studies and a medieval disability studies that does not shy away from recognizing those with a disability as both vibrant and essential contributors to human culture, while also resisting the temptation to simply collapse such people into nothing more than cultural signifiers.

The advent of a more theoretically informed approach to the Middle Ages has led to a tendency in some academic discussion of the body and of the disabled body to privilege it as both the site and object of culture, something that Brian S. Turner cautions could lead us to, quote, "ignore the physiological, biological, and chemical grounding of the body."

The fact that we can even confidently talk of the disabled body is some homogenous concept, as though this has any meaningful material [00:30:00] reference point, is problematic, as it risks reducing an entire spectrum of embodied difference to the role of a theoretical prop on moed from any physical, emotional, or economic reality.

It was only by reflecting on this that I realized that I'd been guilty of doing precisely the same thing over the course of my own research. Selectively picking examples of bodies both real imagined and marshaling them for my own discursive ends. As a corrective, I thought I would try to seek out some of my incontinent forebears in the pre-modern past to feature in this reflection, those of us with Stomas find an unlikely comrade in the figure of Saint Erasmus, usually portrayed undergoing his martyrdom, disembowlment with a windless. Usually such images are gruesome. The saints torturers crowded around his prone body while he's depicted in agony as tracts of his intestine are wound out of him. However, I came across a number of images of Erasmus looking somewhat calmer as he undergoes his torment. In the Netherlandish oil painting in Burlington House, he looks thoroughly bored by the whole affair, while in the manuscript Peerpoint Morgan M 4 87, there is a faint trace of a smile on his lips as [00:31:00] he has relieved of his entrails. Again, a small flash of recognition surged through me as I encountered these images. recalling the countless times I found myself in a cold hospital gurney, a host of medical professionals bent over my body as it uncontrollably discharges all over them.

From the outside, this would look no doubt incredibly distressing, a surgeon wrist deep inside of me, viscera on display, but my dominant memories of such experiences are of boredom and relief as pain is relieved or a blockage is removed. Much like depictions of a Erasmus tribulation, the ordeals of my own body are polysemus and perhaps even unreadable to those without the correct context.

In fact, both of our experiences of the removal of our intestines were necessary for us and the formation of our identity, although while mine was for the purpose of keeping me alive and allowing me to expel waste, his was for the slightly more noble cause of martyrdom and the furthering of the Christian gospel.

Alexandra Lee: Thanks so much, Matt. It's really great to get a sense of what your chapter is about like that. If you're up for it, let's dive into a few [00:32:00] questions. Yeah. To unpack things in a bit more detail. Firstly, it'd be great if you could explain where the idea for your chapter came from.

Matt McCall: It's this thing that I find incredibly frustrating and, and disappointing in the field and, and even in my own practice, as I sort of mentioned in that chapter there, that we feel really confident talking about the disabled body in this academic sense. And in the chapter I talk about this instance where I'm sitting in, in a panel about, like, unruly bodies and then my own body, and I should say for listeners, I, I have a colostomy, that's what this bit is about, starts to misbehave and, and through a series of scatological antics means that I have to kind of leave in a hurry and sort of like disrupt the whole session. And everyone gets very frustrated. And, and there's this irony that we're talking about unruly bodies in a theoretical sense, and when we're presented with one in real life, we don't really know what to do with it. And I think that that kind of kicked the whole thing off and it made me think a little bit more about the intersection of our theoretical practice and our operational practice, in academia, but in our institutions in general. Really.

Alexandra Lee: Absolutely. So this idea of actually making the [00:33:00] abstract real. Mm-hmm. So we're very good at talking in this kind of highfalutin way about concepts, but I think something very powerful in your chapter is that you reach out into the past finding people that you have things in common with in this way. So making disability less abstract, both now and in the medieval past as well.

My next question is, what does disability and medieval studies and academia mean to you?

Matt McCall: Uh, Alex, that's a toughie, isn't it? Um, yes. Do you know? I think in a way, ironically, they're all intertwined. They're all, all, all have been at some point part of my makeup, of my personal identity, and I think there are elements of that that have been quite joyful and elements of that that have also been quite painful. And they're all things, you know, my, my experience in academia, my, my knowledge of my engagement with medieval studies and my experience as a disabled person, they're all things that I reach into and draw on for my own professional practice now, like in museums access and accessibility and the showcasing and the revealing of, of disability [00:34:00] history in the heritage sector is, is something that's really important to me. But then also at the same token, making sure that those spaces are, are welcome for all. But just, I think the, the one thing that I always tell people about medieval studies in the Middle Ages is that it, it provides such a point of connection and such a sort of a point a, a bridging point in a way that so many people who haven't spent time with the Middle Ages maybe don't realize is that in so many ways, we're so much closer to them than we think. And it, it provides a, a perspective and a lens on, on contemporary discourse and contemporary issues that I think can be really enlightening.

And it, it's made me think about disability in a different way, writing in this chapter and, and thinking through my own practice. Um.

Alexandra Lee: Could you be a bit more concrete about that? How has engaging with disability and medieval studies changed your ideas?

Matt McCall: My academic background was in medieval literature, so obviously a lot of the stuff I deal with is, is kind of based around narrative. In my practice in in museums now as well, I realize that we, we are creatures that create meaning through narrative, through stories, how we [00:35:00] apprehend the world. And even the way that we approach disability, I think is often, in a narratological kind of sense, you know, there is often a beginning to it and there is an experience of it in the middle and there will be an end, and maybe we won't actually be conscious of that. But it, it all sort of adds to this life story that we built for ourselves and this life story that we use to kind of form and project our identity. And you see that in medieval text, but you also see that being done for disabled people in medieval text rather than they're doing it themselves. 'cause obviously they're not. Sometimes they're not the people who are actually constructing that narrative. I mean, there are, there are plenty of examples of those that are, you know, you could look at someone like, say Julian of Norwich when she talks about her illness. But it was just that how this, how that the story of, of, of myself and the story of, of my disability is so intertwined in with my, in, with my understanding of who I am and that that's always been the case, but it's always been the case that other people will try and tell you what your story is and if you're a, if you're able to, I think there is such power in being able to kind of share your narrative and share [00:36:00] your specificity.

Alexandra Lee: Absolutely. So it sounds like both in disability and medieval studies, you're thinking about this space for identity to be formed and thought about and mm-hmm. Be stretchy. So these aren't monoliths. It's like: this is the middle Ages, this is the thing. It's like, let's look at this, let's think about this in all sorts of different ways, which I think is absolutely something that you've done in your chapter.

So to wrap up then, could you give us a key takeaway from your chapter?

Matt McCall: The last little bit of the chapter is about Pearl, the, the 14th century English dream narrative. And the character sees another character who is like wounded. Um, and I can't help but feel that this is a little bit like a stoma, it's a sort of a wound in the side. And the dreamer is horrified and isn't able to look away from this wound. It's only when he takes the person as a whole and realizes that actually he can't necessarily understand the subjective experience of what he's seeing, and that maybe there is transformative potential within that, that the dreamer himself has changed.

And I think that's it. Is that we [00:37:00] need to be open and alive to the specific embodied realities or, enmentaled realities of disability. Not see it as a monolith, not see it as a prop, and not also assure ourselves that it's only in the past that, um, we've used disabled bodies as props or as cultural signifiers. We still do it in the 21st century.

Alexandra Lee: Well, this has been great. Thanks so much, Matt, for diving into your chapter in a bit more detail. Oh, it's not with.

Matt McCall: It's my pleasure.

Amy Louise Morgan: Hello, I'm Amy Louise Morgan, a lecturer in Medieval Literature at the University of Surrey. My research focuses on queer readings of medieval literary texts with a particular focus on the intersections between gender, time and space.

In my research and pedagogy, I strive to be an ally and create a safe, accessible, and inclusive learning environment. Here I will read some reflections on accessibility and the allyship from my chapter, challenging the status quo in academic practice, increasing accessibility in higher [00:38:00] education, in on becoming an ally, breaking the cycle of re oppression in people, anne Bishop outlines seven key steps to becoming an ally and argues that central to this process is the requirement to understand the ways in which we have been oppressed, and in turn are oppressors. More recently while discussing the crucial facets of allyship, Mary Rambaran-Olm stresses that quote, "allyship is a verb. Allyship is action. You must live it and allow being an ally to be part of who you are." End quote.

It is no secret that academia is an inaccessible for most people. The academy has long operated under avail of secrecy, elitism, ableism, and privilege. This can be difficult to navigate for everybody, but especially disabled colleagues or those living with chronic conditions. The implicit and cryptic ways in which academia functions means that as an early career scholar particularly, it can be easy to fall [00:39:00] into the trap of accepting the status quo and falsely believing that the learning and working conditions in higher education are immutable because it is just the way it has always been.

I had never had to consider ways to avoid sensory overload, or thought about the rigid and ableist formats of many academic conferences. When I was feeling particularly under pressure, working weekends or into the early hours of the morning, I did not stop to think about how impossible it would be to sustain that workload or consider how these untenable expectations would impact my physically disabled, chronically ill, and neurodiverse colleagues.

Christy Sedgman in "on being unreasonable: breaking the rules and making things better," impels us to not immediately seek or accept the reasonable line of argument, the quote, "moderate middle ground" end quote, and instead to think more unreasonably. She concludes that quote, "the status quo is designed to destroy resistance. To [00:40:00] impede, halt exhaust, grind down, making the process as mentally and emotionally grueling as possible, and painting the register as unreasonable." End quote.

I am using the idea of being unreasonable to offer some suggestions about how we can identify and disrupt ableist practices in academia. I am not claiming that I myself do not have a lot more work to do, nor am I arguing that we will transform academia overnight. Instead, I hope that we can rethink the status quo of academia and consider ways in which we can embrace being unreasonable in our own academic circles to learn from our mistakes and aspire to make academia more inclusive.

Together, we should strive for an academia that celebrates and accommodates academics, students, and professional services staff who have disabilities or chronic conditions without the burden always being on disabled colleagues, students, and activists to fight for these accommodations.

Elizabeth Champion: My name is Elizabeth Champion and I'm a [00:41:00] co-editor and author of "Towards an Accessible Academy, perspectives From Disabled Medievals." I'm an Arms and Armor scholar based in Oxford in the uk. I'm currently apprenticed to Nick Checksfield to become an armorer in historical mail or chain mail. And in my rather limited spare time, I'm an historical European martial arts or HEMA practitioner, specializing in 14th century Italian long sword.

I read English literature at Warwick University with a focus on the middle English prose Merlin before completing a Master's on the medieval round table tournament at the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds. Today I shall be reading the chapter "top 10 action points."

Many of the contributions to this book have offered practical solutions to addressing inaccessibility both within the academy and beyond. We, the editors, have collated a top 10 list of action [00:42:00] points. We know that many of us are time poor, but the majority of these suggestions either do not require an enormous amount of extra work, or simply ask for a change in mindset. So here are 10 easy, straightforward, and important things you can do to make life easier for disabled people.

Action point number one: be kind. If you see someone taking the lift up just one floor or doing something else unexpected, don't scoff and don't assume people are being lazy.

Action point number two: have a go. There will inevitably be obstacles and mistakes on the way to progress, but this is the most important way to make effective change.

Action point number three: don't make assumptions. If someone tells you they have a particular impairment, don't assume that you know what to do without [00:43:00] asking them. If it's a student, look at their reasonable adjustments plan, or if it's a staff member you are responsible for, look at their occupational health report. If there is advice here, follow it.

Action point number four: support precarious disabled staff. If you are line managing someone on a short contract, make sure they know who to go to in order to access disability support and be proactive in offering support if it is not forthcoming quickly. For example, use your institutional knowledge to let new staff know which rooms might not be accessible for them.

Action point number five: avoid precarity where possible. If you have the power advocate for all contracts being at least 12 months rather than 10, and for the avoidance of short-term contracts, where possible.

[00:44:00] Action point number six: bake accessibility into events and teaching. Use our accessible conference guide to cover as many bases as you can within your budget. We know that not all budgets will stretch to cover absolutely everything. Use sensible contrasts, sans serif fonts, and a large font size in presentations as standard.

Action point number seven: talk to your students. Tell them about disability services and that you don't have to identify as disabled to look for help. Tell them what you can do in class without formal notification of an impairment. For example, using a particular PowerPoint background color, font, font size, allowing eating in class.

Action point number eight: be constructive in your feedback. When commenting on a piece of work, whether for students or in, for example, peer review, [00:45:00] consider that we cannot know how much time, effort, and thought someone has put into it, what it has taken for that work to have ended up in our hands to be read. If something is unclear or incorrect, try to formulate feedback with kindness.

Action point number nine: represent marginalized communities in teaching. Demonstrate that understudied and hidden histories are a crucial and necessary part of medieval studies and indeed all areas of study.

Action point number 10: listen to and believe disabled people. When we say we can't help to move a table, we mean it. When we say, no thank you to food, we are not being rude. Don't use disabled colleagues and students as unpaid accessibility consultants. As the adage goes, nothing about us without us.[00:46:00]

Alexandra Lee: We would like to thank all of our authors and also Matt Griffin and Will Howard for letting us use their voices for this podcast. And finally, also, the Multicultural Middle Ages for hosting us. Check out our book "towards an accessible academy, perspectives from Disabled Medievals," especially our open access conference guide.




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