About
🤗 Hi, I’m Beck (they/them)! 🤗
I am a disability historian studying for my PhD at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester, UK. This is my weekly newsletter in which I reflect on my research, have regular existential crises and tell you what TV shows I am watching.
Research Interests
Disability history, STS, lived experience, material culture, intersectionality, and oral history.
My PhD Project: Envisioning Access
Adopting methodologies from STS and disability studies to interrogate audio, material and textual sources, Envisioning Access investigates the co-production of visually impaired users and three mobility technologies: audible pedestrian signals (APS), long white canes, and the Sonic Aid. The project will explore how visually impaired subjectivity was configured, negotiated, and integrated into these technologies during their formative years, c.1960-1990. Charting the evolution of their use and non-use is vital to understanding embodied interactions with technologies and, ultimately, building an accessible world.
The project asks:
How has the visually impaired user – projected and actual – shaped the production, meaning and use of audible pedestrian signals (APS), long white canes, and the Sonic Aid?
What was the nature of contributions made by government bodies and charitable organisations, and how did these relate to the experience of visually impaired users?
What does a user-centred approach to these technology histories reveal about the politics of agency, access and identity underpinning technologies produced for non-normative bodies?