Blog
Welcome to the Disability and Industrial Society blog. Here project members and partners offer their observations and thoughts on a whole range of topics from disability to the challenges and excitement of archival research.
We hope you enjoy what you find.
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16.Dec.2015
The art of industrial medicine: Michael Edmonds' mural unveiling at Llandough Hospital - Mike Mantin
Mike Mantin reports from the unveiling of Michael Edmonds' mural at Llandough Hospital, and discusses its significance as a piece of disability history.
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14.Dec.2015
Towards an Inclusive Disability History? - Paul van Trigt
In this guest post, Paul van Trigt argues for academics and activists to work together for an inclusive disability history.
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09.Dec.2015
Podcast: Being Human Festival part 2
The second part of the recording of our our Being Human Festival 2015 event, 'Disability and Wellbeing: Past, Present and Future', featuring Andrea Gordon of Guide Dogs Cymru and an audience discussion.
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01.Dec.2015
Podcast: Being Human Festival part 1
David Turner, Daniel Blackie and Alexandra Jones speak at our event for Being Human Festival 2015, 'Disability and Wellbeing: Past, Present and Future'.
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05.Oct.2015
Planning an Exhibition: A Guide for Historians - David Turner
David Turner looks back on our exhibition at the National Waterfront Museum and writes about what we've learned as public historians.
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14.Sep.2015
Exhibition podcast: Mark Stone, SAFE/RNIB volunteer
In the final podcast to accompany our exhibition, Mark Stone of Swansea Access for Everyone (SAFE) and volunteer for RNIB Swansea, reviews our exhibition and talks about access to museums and exhibitions for blind and visually impaired people.
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19.Aug.2015
Exhibition podcast: George Brinley Evans
Our second exhibition podcast features George Brinley Evans, writer and ex-miner. George walks through our exhibition with Mike Mantin and talks about the loss of his eye in the mine, working after the accident, life in a mining village and starting his writing career.
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05.Aug.2015
Exhibition podcast: Kat Watkins, SAFE
In the first of a series of podcasts about our exhibition, 'From Pithead to Sick Bed', Kat Watkins from the disability group Swansea Access For Everyone (SAFE) tours the exhibition and talks about how disability history connects to her own experience and activism. In conversation with Mike Mantin.
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22.Jul.2015
Thoughts on the Disability and Industrial Society Symposium - Tom Hansell
The filmmaker Tom Hansell reflects on our 3-day symposium held at the National Waterfront Museum in July 2015, and how it relates to his own film projects in the Welsh and Appalachian coalfields.
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25.Jun.2015
From Pithead to Sick Bed Exhibition Blogs: Listening post literature readings - Alexandra Jones
Alexandra Jones takes us through the readings from coalfields literature available to listen to at our exhibition.
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23.Jun.2015
Inspection Time down at the Waterfront - Daniel Blackie
Photos and thanks from the National Waterfront Museum during the opening week of the 'From Pithead to Sick Bed' exhibition.
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18.Jun.2015
From Pithead to Sick Bed Exhibition Blogs: "Help in Time of Need" Banner - Mike Mantin
In our third and final exhibition blogpost, we look at a replica trade society banner which will be hanging at the exhibition, and what it says about the role of trade and friendly societies in disabled miners' lives.
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11.Jun.2015
From Pithead to Sick Bed Exhibition Blogs: George Preece, Disabled Miner - Mike Mantin
In the second blogpost exploring the artefacts in our exhibition, George Preece, a disabled miner whose life and work is represented in the exhibition.
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04.Jun.2015
From Pithead to Sick Bed Exhibition Blogs: The Trambulance - Mike Mantin
In the first in a series about our exhibition, we look at the story behind the 'trambulance' we will be displaying, and the historical challenges it poses.
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01.Jun.2015
Disability history in the Richard Burton Archives - Katrina Legg
Katrina Legg of the Richard Burton Archives at Swansea University takes us through some of the items in their collection that provide a window into the disability history of industrial South Wales.
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17.Dec.2014
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2014: Baledi a Hanes Anabledd - Steven Thompson
Blog gan Steven Thompson sy'n dod a'n blogiau Mis Hanes Anabledd 2014 i ben.
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10.Dec.2014
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2014: Shepard v. Lore and the Curious Case of the Foul Disease: The Disabling affects of Yaws in Eighteenth-century America - Jason Chernesky
Based on research in the New Jersey Archives, Jason Chernesky uncovers a court case that illustrates the social and cultural implications of yaws in eighteenth-century America.
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05.Dec.2014
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2014: Newspaper Cuttings Books from Queen Mary Hospital Sidcup and Queen Mary Hospital Roehampton - Emmeline Burdett
Emmeline Burdett explores newspaper cuttings books from two hospitals that treated disabled soldiers in World War I.
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01.Dec.2014
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2014: Shell-Shock, Lunacy and Hysteria: How the First World War Changed Experiences of Mental Illness in Britain - Greta Williams Schultz
Greta Williams Schultz on the impact and legacy of World War I for mental illness provision.
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25.Nov.2014
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2014: Disability and Employment: Reconciling the Irreconcilable? - Georgia Burdett
Georgia Burdett starts our Disability History Month with an exploration of the history of disability and employment, using the work of Anne Borsay and the history of Wales' mining industry.
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24.Nov.2014
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2014: Introduction - Mike Mantin
As this year's Disability History Month starts, Mike Mantin introduces this year's series of guest posts on our blog.
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02.Oct.2014
Report: Rethinking Patent Cultures - Mike Mantin
Mike Mantin discusses the Rethinking Patent Cultures project's workshop in Leeds on disability and prosthetics, and asks how it might help historians of disability and coal.
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03.Sep.2014
Anne Borsay: a short tribute
A short tribute to the work of project leader Professor Anne Borsay.
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22.Aug.2014
Sport and Special Education in the 19th and early 20th Centuries - Mike Mantin
Mike Mantin looks into the history of sport in Victorian and Edwardian special education, arguing that it of huge value to the history of disabled and Deaf children
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17.Jul.2014
Mining for Memories: Scottish Disability History Roadshow - Angela Turner
Angela Turner discusses June's 'Mining for Memories' Disability History Roadshow, the recording of which have been collected on our website.
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29.Apr.2014
Report: Coalfield Disability Witness Seminar - Angela Turner
Angela Turner reports on this month's Scottish 'witness seminar', which brought together disabled ex-miners and professionals from the coalfields to discuss the legacy of disability in the coal industry.
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03.Feb.2014
A Melee for the Relief Fund - Mike Mantin
Mike Mantin writes about a disruptive meeting for about a Miners' Permanent Relief Fund, and asks what it tells us about how colliery accidents were perceived by coal-owners and miners.
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03.Jan.2014
Conference Report: Disease, Disability and Medicine in Medieval Europe - Patricia Skinner
Patricia Skinner reports from the medieval disability history conference at Georgia Regents University, Augusta, Georgia, 6-8 December 2013.
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23.Dec.2013
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2013: "You May Have Noticed I am Shy a Larboard Leg": Dr Dogbody and Disability History
Emmeline Burdett looks at James Norman Hall's short story collection 'Dr Dogbody's Leg', using disability history to see the stories in a new light.
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16.Dec.2013
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2013: The Thalidomide Disaster - Anne Borsay and Ruth Blue
Anne Borsay and Ruth Blue on the Thalidomide disaster and how their project is chronicling oral testimonies of those involved.
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13.Dec.2013
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2013: The History of Disability in Christian Thought - Brian Brock
Brian Brock discusses his recent work, which seeks to question assumptions on the ways in which disability has been represented throughout Christian history.
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11.Dec.2013
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2013: The Leonard Cheshire Disability Archive - Stephanie Nield
A history of the Leonard Cheshire Disability charity, their residential homes and campaigning work, and the collections in the Leonard Cheshire Disability Archive, by its archivist Stephanie Nield.
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09.Dec.2013
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2013: The Long History of 'Disability History' - David Turner
David Turner looks at some 18th and 19th century disabled writers who wrote their own disability histories.
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06.Dec.2013
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2013: Disability and the De-industrialisation of the Welsh Valleys - Georgia Burdett
Georgia Burdett looks at the representation of disability in de-industrialised Welsh communities in Christopher Meredith's Shifts
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04.Dec.2013
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2013: Hip Dysplasia and Congenital Hip Dislocation in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century - Gemma Almond
Gemma Almond, undergraduate History student at Swansea University and Paralympic swimmer, writes about her dissertation research on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century hip dislocation and discusses why she decided to study this area of disability history.
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28.Nov.2013
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2013: Cerebral Palsy Midlands: How our project contributes to Disability History and why we need Disability Heritage - Lottie Clark
Lottie Clark of Cerebral Palsy Midlands introduces their new heritage project and discusses what heritage oral history can contribute to our understandings of disability both in the past and today.
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25.Nov.2013
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2013: Collecting Disability History - Nicole Belolan
Nicole Belolan explores what the study of material culture can contribute to disability history by taking us through examples from her own collection. Guest post for UK Disability History Month blogs 2013.
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22.Nov.2013
UK Disability History Month Blogs 2013: Introduction - Mike Mantin
Mike Mantin introduces a series of guest posts on disability history which will feature on our blog throughout UK Disability History Month 2013 (22 November - 22 December).
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14.Oct.2013
Remembering Senghenydd - one hundred years on - Ben Curtis
Ben Curtis writes about the memorial events marking 100 years since the Senghenydd colliery disaster, the UK's worst mining accident, which killed 439 miners.
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11.Oct.2013
Conference Report: The European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, Lisbon, 4-7 September 2013 - Angela Turner
Angela Turner reports from the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health (EAHMH) conference on 'Risk and Disaster in Health and Medicine' in Lisbon, including the Disability and Industrial Society panel.
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25.Sep.2013
Conference Report: Accidents and Emergencies: Risk, Welfare and Safety in Europe and North America, c.1750-2000 - Mike Mantin
Mike Mantin writes about the 'Accidents and Emergencies' conference at Oxford Brookes in September 2013, which explored the themes of risk, welfare and safety in history.
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10.Sep.2013
Disability in Time and Place - Kara Brown
Kara Brown reviews the new 'Disability in Time and Place' teaching resource from English Heritage.
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09.Aug.2013
'Never give way to despondency': The sufferings of George Spearing in a Coal Pit, 1769 - David Turner
David Turner uncovers the story of Lieutenant George Spearing, who fell into a Scottish coal pit in 1769 and wrote about both his ordeal in the pit and his subsequent amputation.
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18.Jul.2013
Conference Report: VariAbilit(ies) A Conference on the History and Representation of the Body in its Diversity - Victoria Brown
Victoria Brown reports from the VariAbilit(ies) conference in Decatur, Georgia, 4-6 July 2013, and finds a diverse and vibrant discussion about the meanings of disability and ability.
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11.Jul.2013
Disfigurement in the Middle Ages - Patricia Skinner
Patricia Skinner of Swansea University shares her prizewinning entry to the Swansea University SURF Research as Art competition, which shows visually the sites of medieval facial disfigurement.
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14.Jun.2013
Voices from the Past: A New History of Disability - Alun Withey
A review of the recent Radio 4 series 'Disability: A New History' by Alun Withey of the University of Exeter
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06.Jun.2013
More Disability History Documentaries Please - Daniel Blackie
Daniel Blackie on why we need more programmes like Radio 4's groundbreaking "Disability: A New History".
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30.May.2013
Review of Ben Curtis, 'The South Wales Miners: 1964-1985' - Chris Williams
Chris Williams reviews the new study of the South Wales miners by 'Disability and Industrial Society' team member Ben Curtis.
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21.May.2013
The Miner's Lamp - Ben Curtis
In this posting Ben Curtis considers the meaning and significance of the miner's lamp.
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13.May.2013
"Cap in Hand?" Report Issued - Georgia Burdett
Georgia Burdett on the Bevan Foundation's Report on Disabled People in Wales
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10.May.2013
An English Heritage Conference on Disability History at the London Metropolitan Archives - Anne Borsay
Anne Borsay reports on English Heritage's recent conference, 'Disability History: Voices and Sources' and discusses the organisation's recent work in disability history.
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26.Apr.2013
Reflections on the Price of Coal Roadshow at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea - Steph Mastoris
Head of the National Waterfront Museum reflects on the project's successful and well attended first Roadshow event held in March 2013
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19.Mar.2013
Disability Wales' Story at 40: Building an oral history of disability - Mike Mantin
Mike Mantin looks at Disability Wales' recent series of interviews with disabled people, and asks what its significance might be for the future of oral disability history.
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11.Feb.2013
My Time with Big Pit - Alex Rees
At the end of January 2013 team member Alex Rees spent time at Big Pit as part of the Knowledge Exchange scheme. In this posting, she reflects on her experiences.