Ruby Goodley

Profile

I obtained a first class undergraduate degree in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester (2019-2023), with a year of international study at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2021-22). I gained White Rose Doctoral Training Programme funding in 2023, from the ESRC studentship funding programme.  As part of this funding, I completed my MA Social Research at the University of Leeds (2023-24).

Alongside my interest in education, I have a continual commitment to feminist and disability rights through an interest in left-wing politics. I have a keen commmitment to disability, community building, social justice and working with disabled people. I have volunteered for food banks, organisations run by people with learning disabilities and organisations offering summer day-camp opportunities to disabled young children and adults in West Yorkshire. I have also been actively involved in events planning, both during my undergraduate and postgraduate education, I am part of the management team of the White Rose Disabillity Network which brings postgraduate researchers across the North of England together through disability focused events. I am also a postgraduate representative for the Centre for Disability Studies (CDS) at the University of Leeds which involves organising PGR-led events, symposiums and conferences. I was also Chair of the Anthropology Society during my second year at the University of Manchester, striving to create scholarly events that brought staff and students together. 

Research interests

My PhD project comes out of the absence of disability in my own experieneces of anthropological pedagogy at the University of Manchester. Disability was only mentioned a handful of times during my undergraduate taught courses. Whilst anthropology is attuned to different ways of being human in the world, the theoretical reflexive contentions of postcolonial/indigenous turns and feminist turns did a lot to include the voices and experiences of female, indigenous and postcolonial scholars in the discipline of anthropology but neglected to mention disabled anthropologists. My undergraduate dissertation titled – ‘Cripping’ anthropology: Arguments for a paradigm shift in the discipline.’ sought to include the embodied experiences of disabled anthropologists to offer suggestions to make anthropology a more inclusive disicpline to all non-normative researchers (any researcher who is not white, male, middle-class and non-disabled). 

My Masters dissertation built on this undergraduate work, I conducted a small scale qualitative study with four disabled (cis-gender) female academics with hidden impairments working in social science departments in England. My study looked at the experiences of sexism and ableism in the Neo-liberal academy. I concluded this dissertation with recommendations (taken from my participants experiences) to remove the exclusionary forces in Higher Education Institutions in the United Kingdom and make these spaces more inclusive for everyone. 

Both dissertations have contributed to my theoretical underpinnings in this PhD project, by attending to the experiences of disabled anthropologists in their own discipline, I intend on using this as a disciplinary case study to offer pratical recommendations to the Academic structure and its intitutions, so that Higher Educational spaces can be more inclusive to all non-normative researchers. 

Qualifications

• First class degree BSocSci Social Anthropology - University of Manchester
• Distinction MA Social Research at the University of Leeds

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Disability Studies