Christina Lee introduces the context behind Disability Matters’ upcoming ‘Online Town Hall Circus’ event which will take place on the 19th of September.
EDI: ‘D’ for ‘Disability’
In the last decade, the equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) turn in UK universities and research organisations has led to significant changes in research culture, evidenced by the commitments from major funders to expand diversity in research. In the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Strategy 2022-27, diversity is identified as one of the key principles deemed essential for catalysing the flow of knowledge across sectors and building a connected, sustainable, and agile research and innovation (R&I) system (UKRI, 2022). The Wellcome Trust’s strategy titled Better health for all stresses diversity within biomedical and health research as important in ensuring research responds to the health challenges of diverse populations (Wellcome, 2024). As Wellcome suggests, the most marginalised and disadvantaged communities are often the least well-served by today’s global health systems. It is therefore essential that diverse research teams and communities are involved in research from the very beginning to ensure the research is informed by people’s needs and that its outputs are accessible to the communities most affected.
However, as well as affirming the value of diversity and EDI in health research, as researchers and educators, we also need to ask: what is the role of disability in EDI? How does disability challenge the ways we understand and practice EDI?
Wellcome’s report on research culture shows that disabled and chronically ill researchers continue to face barriers in the university system (Wellcome 2020). Inaccessible working conditions and pervasive perceptions of disabled researchers as ‘less productive’ and more ‘difficult to manage’ than non-disabled researchers mean that disabled researchers miss out on promotions and are more likely to experience bullying or harassment (Wellcome 2020, 32). There is limited data on how researchers with different types of disabilities and conditions experience different challenges and how disability and ableism intersect with other forms of oppression like transphobia, racism, and sexism (Wolbring and Lillywhite 2021). Disability is itself a broad category that includes a range of conditions, and experiences of disability are framed by individual circumstances and the kinds of support people need to live and participate in society access needs. As Goodley and Liddiard suggest, if we are to embrace diversity in research to combat inequities in health, we must rethink our approaches to EDI and ensure that it is inclusive of a diverse understanding of disability, identity, and health conditions (Goodley and Liddiard 2023).
Disability Matters is a six-year pan-national programme funded by a Wellcome Discretionary Award that centres disability as the driving subject of healthcare research and addresses the health realities and priorities for disabled people across five countries (UK, India, Singapore, Canada, and Australia). This September 2025, Disability Matters will launch the online town hall circus, as part of a series of annual knowledge exchange events to bring together researchers, funders, policymakers, and disabled people’s organisations to collectively think about how disability can drive innovative change and expand equity, diversity and inclusion in health research. The online town hall forms part of Phase 7 of Disability Matters, which focuses on transforming equity, diversity, and inclusion through disability. The first online town hall event will be held by the Sheffield Disability Matters team and will travel to other sites in the following years.
Why a town hall circus?
The work of collectively reframing EDI with disability as the starting point begins with thinking critically about who has access to the meeting and how we meet. The town hall metaphor itself is a product of settler colonialism and white supremacy ideologies (Toliver, Jones, Jimenz et al. 2019). The history of town halls or city halls can be traced back to medieval Europe when they were formed as centres for trade, civic engagement, and local governance (Chattopadhyay and White, 2014). In nineteenth-century England, town halls took on social functions as places to hold large gatherings like festive celebrations, dances, concerts, and even circus shows with live lions (Hungerford Virtual Museum, 2025). When town halls were established outside Europe, they took on extended significance as symbols of colonial and imperial power. In New England, USA, the town hall meeting was used by Puritan settlers to legitimate their political rule over stolen lands (Gustafson, 2019). Under the name of democratic engagement, legislative decisions were made while women, indigenous people, and people of colour were excluded from such meetings (Toliver et al. 2019; Beecher 2019).
The colonial politics of historic town halls reminds us that the town hall meeting is not value-free but marked by structures of power that privilege the voices of some and marginalise others. This is true even for university town hall meetings. Just as public officials organise town hall meetings to gather questions and feedback from constituents, town hall meetings are increasingly used by universities as a way of engaging the wider student body and staff to share key messaging and hold conversations on pressing issues. When conducted well, town halls can be a useful way to communicate with and gather feedback from community members. However, disabled, chronically ill people, and those with caring responsibilities are often unable to attend in-person town halls. Conversations are often dominated by senior colleagues while those who are on insecure employment contracts or dependent on work visas are more reticent about voicing their opinions about concerns publicly due to fears of abuse and potential risks of jeopardising their careers. Some scholars like Jonathan Field Beecher also question the purpose of the town hall (Beecher, 2019). Rather than the place where decisions are made, town halls tend to relay financial and policy decisions already made by leadership elsewhere (Ibid). This effectively turns the town hall meeting into a ‘campus spectacle’ that ‘performs accountability theatre’ without implementing meaningful change (Beecher 2019, 51).
Looking to ‘do’ knowledge exchange differently, the Disability Matters online town hall circus draws inspiration from non-human gatherings, such as social seabirds like puffins, known for their colourful and playful nature, to reimagine this series of knowledge exchange as a different kind of performance. A circus can refer to a travelling troupe of acrobatic performers and entertainers, but it is also the collective noun for a group of puffins, which is also known as “a circus, an improbability, a colony, a burrow and a gathering” (Oxford English Dictionary 2024; Yorkshire Wildlife Trust 2021). Just as puffins are always curiously exploring new things and rafting together on the shores, we want to remake the town hall into a space that cultivates joy and wonder.
But the word ‘circus’ also carries unfortunate connotations. In academia, the term ‘lecture circus’ is used to refer to a series of talks delivered by different speakers, as in the lecture circus series given at universities and the interdisciplinary Lecture Circus by the University of Pennsylvania (Penn Libraries 2023; Oxford Historians Hub 2023). The metaphor of the circus itself comes with problematic histories as people with bodily and physical differences including disabled people, Black, fat people, were exhibited in circuses and sideshows as entertainment in nineteenth century Britain and America (Craton 2009; Woolf 2019). As terms like town hall and lecture circuses suggest, academic gatherings are frequently grounded in metaphorical language with exclusionary histories and politics. Yet if metaphors structure what we perceive and how we relate to other people, then imbuing the metaphors we use with new meanings and emotions can perhaps help us negotiate other, more inclusive ways of gathering (Lakoff and Johnson 2008, 3).
Expanding equity and inclusion is an iterative process of experimentation that inevitably generates more questions than answers. Disability helps us think critically not just about accessibility but also the language we use and how we engage with each other. By inverting these metaphors and making space to sit with each other with these conflicts and discomfort, the online town hall circus aims to disrupt these histories and create a more equitable research environment where disabled, non-normative bodies and minds can, like the puffins, play and dance freely.
The Disability Matters online town hall circus will take place on 19th September from 12-1.30pm BST via Zoom. Event details and registration can be found here.
About the author:
Christina Lee is Research Associate: Knowledge Exchange for Disability Matters at the University of Sheffield. Her research explores intersectionality perspectives of disability and health and works across medical humanities and disability studies.
Disability Matters is a Wellcome-funded programme based at iHuman, University of Sheffield.
References
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Goodley, Daniel, and Kirsty Liddiard. 2023. ‘Disability Matters: Thinking Critically about Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’. The Polyphony, March 10. https://thepolyphony.org/2023/03/10/disability-matters-thinking-critically-about-equality-diversity-and-inclusion/.
Gustafson, Sandra M. 2019. ‘The Town Meeting Ideal and Race in America’. Journal of Deliberative Democracy 15 (2). https://doi.org/10.16997/jdd.334.
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Wolbring, Gregor, and Aspen Lillywhite. 2021. ‘Equity/Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Universities: The Case of Disabled People’. Societies 11 (2): 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc11020049.
Woolf, John. 2019. The Wonders: Lifting the Curtain on the Freak Show, Circus and Victorian Age. Michael O’Mara Books.
