Heidi Mapley

Playful memories of yesterday, playful memories of tomorrow: piecing together an understanding of how toys come to matter and how disability pertains to this mattering

Principal supervisor: Dr Laura Trafi-Prats
Supervisors: Dr Neil Carey and Professor Rebecca Lawthom
Start date: October 2019
End date: October 2022

Background and aims

This research uses new materialism to respond to and expand on the beliefs of cultural disability studies (cds), which considers how thoughtful and nuanced portrayals of disability contribute to an inclusive society.

In relation to this call for cultural inclusion, researchers working in cds believe that a) the wellbeing of disabled people is improved by informed inclusion of disability in culture; b) all people benefit from exposure to disability, as prejudicial practices become reduced; and, c) when disability forms part of the everyday environment it can be valued on its own terms.

In taking a patchwork ethnographic approach that speculates over these beliefs, this research employs diffraction as a methodological practice of ‘reading insights through one another’.

The overall aim is to identify the intra-actions of discourse, toys, and human subjects, to assemble an understanding of how toys come to matter and how disability pertains to this mattering. This thesis, then:

Provides a diffractive analysis of the playfulness that (e)merges between toys and human subjects.
Ascertains what material-discursive practices of (dis)ability transpire when toys and human subjects come together.
Interrogates the ways in which disability representative toys are of value to adults and children alike.

publications

Mapley, H. (2015) ‘In search of disability: a critical discourse analysis of a Key Stage 1 guided reading scheme’. Disability & Society, Vol. 30, no. 6: 896-909.

Mapley, H. (2016) ‘“Culture as Pharmakon”: Representation, Social Encounters, and Discourses of Disability’. Considering Disability Journal. Online Only.

Mapley, H. (2017) ‘Comment from the Field: The Voice of Disability, Seminar Series, Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University’. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Vol. 11, no. 1: 99-101.

Mapley, H. and Burch, L. (2017) ‘Comment from the Field: Disability in “Fact” and “Fiction” Seminar, Critical and Community Psychology Research Group, Manchester Metropolitan University’. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Vol. 11, no. 3: 365-368.

Mapley, H. and Bolt, D. (2018) The Dance of Difference: The Tripartite Model of Disability and the Cultural Heritage of Dance. In book: Dance, Disability and Law: InVisible Difference. Bristol: Intellect.

Contact Heidi

Email: heidi.mapley@stu.mmu.ac.uk