IILAH TWILIGHT SEMINAR Studies in Ableism: Illuminating Disability Jurisprudence

Convenor and Chair: Oishik Sircar (Melbourne Law School) In the last fifteen years there has been a growth in scholarship concerning disability and law. Unlike feminist and racial jurisprudence, in most of these works the application of a theoretical analysis of the underpinnings and impacts of law has been absent. Compulsory ablebodiedness is implicated in the foundations of law whether that is in terms of a jurisprudence of deliberative capacity or the notion of the reasonable ‘man’. Campbell will demonstrate that as a domain of theory, Studies in Ableism epistemologically can contribute to new ways of thinking about legal and policy interventions with the vulnerable subject especially persons characterised as disabled. It argues that ableist relations are a useful schema for reframing of understandings of dis(ability), capacity and difference. Associate Professor Fiona Kumari Campbell headed for nine years the largest disability studies program in the southern hemisphere at Griffith University. She introduced and taught the course Disability Jurisprudence for two years at the Griffith Law School. Campbell is Adjunct Professor in Disability Studies, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka and acts as a consultant for the Law School at the University of Colombo. She is the author of 50 publications, including Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness (Palgrave, 2009) and is currently completing a new book on Disability Jurisprudence.