Summer Solstice Update for the PROUD Project – 21 June 2021 (National Indigenous People’s Day)

The PROUD research team is entering the summer months busier than ever and we wanted to update participants, followers and other interested visitors about our progress. 

We are almost finished conducting interviews with employees for our Canada phase of the research project, and are now recruiting employers. 

We would like to hear from organizations and businesses in Canada, that currently employ people with physical disabilities, about their experiences and insights. 

We are beginning the production of our podcast series, “Broadcastability” in collaboration with Easter Seals Canada. These podcasts feature participants from our research who are interested in sharing their experiences in the workplace with a larger, public audience.  We are hiring a student to help with the podcasts on a part-time basis for the next 6-12 months.  We have a description and call for this position at _________.

Easter Seals Canada invited us to present our research findings at a webinar for Red Shirt Day Canada, entitled: “What Works:  What does disability inclusion bring to the workplace.”  The slides and webinar recording will be captioned and can be accessed both on the Easter Seals website and here.  The PROUD Project will also write a short article outlining some of the observations that we shared during this session.

Chloë Atkins and Andrea Whiteley recently received funding from the University of Toronto Global Classrooms Initiative to teach a course in the Health & Society program at Scarborough College.  It will be a senior undergraduate course entitled: Research Methodology and the Intersectional Ethics of Working with Disabled and d/Deaf People and Other Vulnerable Groups. Some of our projects will be in liaison with scholars from the University of Manchester, UK.  Alys Young, Katherine Young, and Emma Ferguson-Rogers and ourselves will endeavour to deliver a collaborative and completely accessible course for deaf and disabled students from UoM and University of Toronto.  

The research team is currently writing two articles reporting on our bibliometric literature review in the area of disability and employment.  For this research we surveyed 1200 publications to understand the specialization, location, type and contributors to research in the field.  Typically, our results revealed slightly different conclusions than we expected and we ended up undertaking a critique of the use of research databases as a tool for people interested in disability inclusion in the workforce.

We are happily busy.  And we invite anyone who is interested in disability and in furthering disabled persons inclusion in the workforce and overall society to get in touch with us. 

In particular, as it is National Indigenous People’s Day in Canada, and that disability occurs at higher rates in indigenous populations, if we can be of assistance to First Nations, Metis and Innuit communities who want to carry out their own explorations in the area of disability, we would be happy to try be of help.

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