Research cluster: Learning disabilities and autism
Improving the lives of people with learning disabilities and autistic people by understanding and tackling inequalities, injustice and exclusion.
About our research
About our research
We aim to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities and autistic people.
Our distinctive approach is centred on working with people with learning disabilities, autistic people, and their families — including involving them as co-researchers.
How we work is vitally important to us. We seek to creatively break boundaries and find new ways of working.
Our research brings into the light the inequalities people face, and helps to understand why this happens and how to support people to enjoy flourishing lives.
We put the evidence we find in the hands of people who can make use of it to drive positive social change.
An essential part of our work is building capacity for the future — helping people with learning disabilities, autistic people and family carers to develop research skills and play a full part in our research. As well as researching equity, we aim to promote it through our research practice.
Our research cluster is underpinned by a commitment to social justice and ethics.
Our research areas
Our particular interests include:
- marginalisation and experiences of exclusion
- strategies of resistance
- experiences throughout the life course, including into older age
- evaluating social and health care services
- critically examining social care policy
- relationships, intimacy and sexuality
- socioeconomic and health inequalities
- patient safety and protection for groups deemed to be vulnerable
- mental health and wellbeing
- families
Our collaborations
We work with a diverse network of people with learning disabilities, family carers, self advocacy and third sector organisations, policymakers, service providers, health and social care practitioners, and academics.
Our research networks extend throughout the UK, and internationally with joint projects as far afield as Japan and Australia.
Individual collaborators include:
- Changing Our Lives
- Dimensions
- Learning Disability England
- Learn, Motivate, Change, Prosper
- MacIntyre
- My Life, My Choice
- Pathways Associates
- People First
- Self-advocacy organisations across England
- Sunderland People First
- Association of Directors of Adult Social Services
- British Association of Social Workers
- Care Quality Commission
- Department of Health and Social Care
- INQUEST
- Local Government Association
- NHS England
- Skills for Care
Featured research
Completed and linked research
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Key publications and news
Books
- Ryan, S (2020) Love, Learning Disabilities and Pockets of Brilliance How Practitioners Can Make a Difference to the Lives of Children, Families and Adults. Jessica Kingsley Publishers
- Ryan, S (2017) Justice for Laughing Boy Connor Sparrowhawk — A Death by Indifference. Jessica Kingsley Publishers
- Emerson, E and Hatton, C (2013) Health inequalities and people with intellectual disabilities, Cambridge University Press
Journal articles
- Mikulak, M, Ryan, S, Bebbington, P, Bennett, S and Carter, J et al (2022) ‘’Ethno…graphy?!? I can’t even say it”: Co‐designing training for ethnographic research for people with learning disabilities and carers British Journal of Learning Disabilities 50(1), pp52-60
- Caton, S, Hatton, C, Gillooly, A, Oloidi, E, Clarke, L, Bradshaw, J, Flynn, S, Taggart, L, Mulhall, P, Jahoda, A, Maguire, R and Marriott, A (2022) Online social connections and internet use among people with intellectual disabilities in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic New Media and Society, 26 May, 2022
- Mikulak, M, Ryan, S, Russell, S, Caton, S, Keagan-Bull, R, Spalding, R, Ribenfors, F, Hatton, C (2022) ‘Internet is easy if you know how to use it’: Doing online research with people with learning disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1 August, 2022
News and media articles
Contact
Contact us
You can contact individual members of the team through their staff profiles.
For general enquiries, please contact research group lead Prof Chris Hatton.