When thinking about a PhD, it’s easy to focus on the D(octorate), but some will truly honour the Ph(ilosophy). In this episode, Will sits down with Dr Joshua Sadler, who recently defended his Techne-funded thesis, “41 Minutes West: A Passage Towards the ‘Non-Man’, Through Learning Disability, Impossible Epistemes, and Unreal Ontologies”. 

Sitting at the intersection of performance studies, critical disability studies, and epistemology, Josh’s work argue that people with severe learning disabilities are not just the victims of epistemic injustice, but of epistemic exclusion, in that the knowledge they produce cannot be expressed in the dominant epistemology of the academy.  

Josh has done all his studies at Roehampton, he also works as a carer, now at the Grange Centre for people with learning disabilities in Bookham; in addition to this, he his lead facilitator Freewheelers , a youth theatre company of people with disabilities. 

Josh is the Curator of the ‘Us and Them’ project, recreating Victorian photographs of people with disabilities with era-accurate equipment, in partnership with King’s College and On the Record was recently featured on BBC News. 

Chapters 

00:09 – Introduction 

01:04 - Josh’s Thesis 

02:55 – Data collection 

04:14 – The participants (Jack and Ray) 

06:40 – Was this  a work of epistemology from the start? 

08:19 – The tension at the core of the work 

09:24 – ‘Man’ / ‘Sub-human’ /’ Non-Man' 

10:35 – Setting up a double-bind 

11:11 -  Lucy (participant) 

12:25 – Josh's positionality 

14:40 – His journey to the PhD 

16:07 – What comes next? 
 

The Roey Grad Podcast is a presentation of the University of Roehampton’s Graduate School.  

Our theme music is by DiamondTunes 
 
Our hosts are two PhD students at Roehampton, Charles Miller and Will Berard, who also edits and mixes the podcast. It was produced by Aaliyah Hassan. 

Comments, questions, want to appear on the show? Get in touch at [email protected]