Fun fact: the “A” in “AI” stands for “Alt-ac”
Harriet Cooper
@harrietcooper.bsky.social
Lecturer, UEA Medical School, #DisabilityStudies, #MedHums Associate Editor, @bmj.com Medical Humanities journal Research/writing on: the figure of the disabled child, shame and stigma in health and illness, lived experience and memoir culture. She/her
2 years ago @the-polyphony.bsky.social kindly invited me @gmthomas.bsky.social @amychandler.bsky.social & Tanisha to write about the book we were putting together on stigma (see ⬇️). Now it's out @brisunipress.bsky.social they've let us do a mini-takeover! 1/5 thepolyphony.org/2023/09/11/r...
Recalibrating Stigma
Gareth Thomas, Tanisha Spratt, Oli Williams, and Amy Chandler reflect on the 2023 symposium: Recalibrating Stigma, Sociological Perspectives on Health and Illness.
thepolyphony.org
Lastly Caroline Law and @harrietcooper.bsky.social pull together their respective analyses of male infertility and parenting disabled children to consider how stigma is involved in shaping and maintaining reproductive norms and idealised notions of family. 4/5 thepolyphony.org/2025/12/05/r...
Reproductive norms: stigma and disruptions in family-building
In the final of our ‘Recalibrating Stigma’ mini-takeover, Caroline Law and Harriet Cooper explores how stigma operates in relation to reproductive norms.
thepolyphony.org
"When anti-stigma campaigns shift away from acting on the wider determinants of health [..] they tend to [..] reproduce inequalities." #RecalibratingStigma @oliwilliams.bsky.social @gmthomas.bsky.social @amychandler.bsky.social Tanisha Spratt @brisunipress.bsky.social
The Polyphony @the-polyphony.bsky.social · 8mo agoIn the first of our 'Recalibrating Stigma' mini-takeover, Oli Williams, Gareth M. Thomas, Amy Chandler, and Tanisha Spratt introduce the concept of anti-stigma. thepolyphony.org/2025/12/03/a...
Petition:
Just Treatment @justtreatment.org · 10mo ago🚨 BREAKING: Reports say the UK is preparing to hike #NHS drug prices - a move pushed by Donald Trump & Big Pharma so they can pocket even bigger profits. If this goes ahead, more NHS funds will be siphoned from care to corporate greed. Take action now: actionnetwork.org/petitions/ke...
💊✨ JOIN OUR BOARD ✊💊 We’re looking for new Board members to help guide the next chapter of Just Treatment’s fight for health justice. Find out more and apply by 26 October ⬇️ justtreatment.org/news/2025/10...
Join our board — Just Treatment
We’re recruiting new Board members to help guide the next chapter of Just Treatment’s fight for health justice.
justtreatment.org
Medact is recruiting a Fundraising Manager: Trusts & Grants! Join the fight for health justice. This is a part-time, fixed term contract, to help Medact secure essential funding over the next year. Applications close on 10th November. www.medact.org/2025/blogs/f...
Fundraising Manager: Trusts & Grants - Medact
Apply now to be Medact's Fundraising Manager.
medact.org
www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/48078... I will be hosting a reading group on the work of Lauren Berlant Oct.-Nov. @crasshlive.bsky.social. Berlant's writing on sentimentality and the public sphere has lots to say to the current moment we're living through + anyone in Cambridge should please join us!
Lauren Berlant: A Michaelmas Reading Group - CRASSH
In an early talk about Cruel Optimism, Lauren Berlant describes their critical object: namely, the “desire”, which they perceive as endemic to capitalism, “to have a cluster of feelings in lieu of hav...
crassh.cam.ac.uk
"In many ways, UKVI and Home Office policy pushes universities towards the sorts of risk management practices that consumer law was designed to rule out. But [universities may also over-recruit] on terms that attempt to ensure they are protected, while students are not." wonkhe.com/blogs/visa-o...
Visa oversubscription at UCL may be more than just a PR problem
Jim Dickinson explores how UCL’s oversubscription crisis has left hundreds of international students in limbo - raising fresh questions about whether UK universities are operating within consumer law
wonkhe.com
10 days until the #CFP deadline for the online workshop *Object Stories in Health and Medicine 1700-1900*. We invite proposals for 15-minute talks on a single object related to health or medicine during the 18th & 19th centuries #histmed #histpsych #medhums www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/objec...
Object Stories in Health and Medicine, 1700-1900 - University of Birmingham
x9artsandlaw-event,x9history-event,x9historycultures-event,x9clemt-event
birmingham.ac.uk
"[Kafka's] parables [..] [ask] whether [..] we can still expect justice from the law, or whether legal process diverges so dramatically from the path of justice that we can only now tell stories about how the expectation of justice is vanquished by legal proceeding" www.thenation.com/article/soci...
Kafka-land at UC Berkeley
The 160 members of the university notified that their names were forwarded to the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights were not informed of any specific allegations against them.
thenation.com
Really like Christina's interrogation of the terms "town hall" and "circus" in this piece on listening exercises and the question of who is able to speak / who can be heard #DisabilityMatters
The Polyphony @the-polyphony.bsky.social · 11mo agoChristina Lee introduces the context behind Disability Matters' upcoming 'Online Town Hall Circus' event which will take place on the 19th of September. thepolyphony.org/2025/09/05/t...
A brief 🧵on the UK's cynical and conveniently shifting position on this. news.sky.com/story/israel...
Israel not committing genocide in Gaza, but casualties and destruction are 'utterly appalling', says UK government
Israel has strongly denied that its actions in Gaza amount to genocide, but is being challenged on the issue in a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
news.sky.com
And the winner is …. UCL that increased its u/g offers by 65%. Where are you going to put all these students, UCL?!
These Russell Group unis are letting in way more students - and other unis aren't happy
One London uni is accepting 65 per cent more students than it did five years ago
thetab.com
SRO is still accepting proposals for their next special issue! The proposed special issue can be on any theme and should offer an exciting contribution to emerging sociological debates. Submit by 24 September 2025. Details below. www.britsoc.co.uk/media/26923/...
I'm reading it too! It's so good. And there's a reading group on it coming up in September: www.feministduration.com
Feminist Duration Reading Group
feministduration.com
Laura Salisbury@laurasalisbury.bsky.social · last yr.Currently rereading Carolyn Steedman's account of mid-century motherhood and childhood _Landscape for a Good Woma_ and reeling under its intellectual and affective power. It begins by remembering a health visitor saying to her mother 'This house isn't fit for a baby'. Steedman reflects:
No doctor today is worth less than they were 17 years ago, as Dr Melissa Ryan told Newsnight. That’s why resident doctors in England have voted for industrial action. There’s still time for the Government to listen and avert the strikes.
Massacre after massacre, day after day - the deliberate annihilation of an entire civilian population. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Children queuing for supplements killed in Israeli strike in Gaza, hospital says
Eight children were among 15 people reportedly killed when a queue for nutritional supplements was hit in Deir al-Balah.
bbc.co.uk
Join us! We are advertising two part-time, paid Editorial Fellowships at History Workshop in 2025-27. Our fellowships support early career historians to develop expertise in public, radical and digital history & to gain experience of working in an editorial team. www.historyworkshop....
Call for Applications: Editorial Fellowships at History Workshop, 2025
History Workshop is advertising two part-time, paid Editorial Fellowships in 2025, open to early career historians.
historyworkshop.org.uk
BREAKING: Zeteo has released, globally, the film the BBC so controversially refused to air. "Gaza: Doctors Under Attack" is now available to watch in full at gazadoctors.film and zeteo.com. Here's the trailer:
In Parliament today I spoke about the truth behind rising welfare costs - and why I cannot support the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill, which does not address these roots causes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap3x...
Labour MP explains why welfare costs are really rising (and why he's voting against cuts)
YouTube video by Clive Lewis
youtube.com
Delighted to be speaking at this symposium today, and to see my chapter for 'Recalibrating Stigma' in print!
Amy Chandler@amychandler.bsky.social · last yr.26th June: we are excited to host an FSHI funded symposium at U of Edinburgh based around the forthcoming edited collection 'Recalibrating Stigma: Sociologies of Health and Illness' More details below!
Tomorrow 👇🏼
Gareth M. Thomas@gmthomas.bsky.social · last yr.Free symposium, 'Recalibrating Stigma', on 26.06.25 at at University of Edinburgh. Funded by SHI Foundation. Speakers: Katharine Cheston, Harriet Cooper, Fay Dennis, Janice McLaughlin, Jennifer Remnant, and more! Details: jumpshare.com/v/bzZYybtCP9.... Register by 30/04. Email at thomasg23@cf.ac.uk.
We started working on this in 2021 and there is *finally* a physical copy of the book in my hand. It feels great that other people can now read all the great work that's in this collection. It is available as a free e-book and in paperback: bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/recalibratin...
Are you working in #VisualMedicalHumanities with a specific focus on art, anatomy and medicine? The BMJ Medical Humanities has just released this CFP for articles on "visuality in medical practice and history". Looking forward to seeing how this moves the field forward! mh.bmj.com/pages/topic-...
Topic Collection: Visual Medical Humanities | Medical Humanities
mh.bmj.com
I finally created a profile on this website... Probably on here rather erratically though!