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Learning Disabilities

How has society's treatment of people with learning disabilities changed over the centuries? Also, do we still apply unhelpful labels, which stigmatise rather than support?

Laurie Taylor talks to Simon Jarrett, Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, about the social history of people with learning disabilities, from 1700 to the present days. Using evidence from civil and criminal court-rooms, joke books, slang dictionaries, novels, art and caricature, he explores the explosive intermingling of ideas about intelligence and race, while bringing into sharp focus the lives of people often seen as the most marginalised in society. They’re joined by Magdalena Mikulak, a Research Fellow in Health at Lancaster University who has researched the way the term ‘behaviours that challenge others’ which are attributed to 20% of those with learning disabilities, can stigmatise and exclude people from society,

Producer: Jayne Egerton

Available now

28 minutes

On radio

Sunday 06:05

Featured

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Guests and further reading

-Ìý, Research Fellow at the Open University

Those they called idiots: the idea of the disabled mind from 1700 to the present day (Reaktion Books)

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-Ìý, Research Fellow in Health Research at Lancaster University

Paper: by ÌýMagdalena Mikulak, Sara Ryan, Elizabeth Tilley, Susan Ledger

Lisa Davidson, Pam Bebbigton & Dawn Wiltshire (Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research)


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Broadcasts

  • Yesterday 15:30
  • Sunday 06:05

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ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Thinking Allowed is produced in partnership with The Open University

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