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Dr Emma Sheppard

@emmas.bsky.social
874 followers 660 following 445 posts

Sociologist, Aberystwyth. Critical disability studies. Overthinking trauma, bodies, pain, time, sexuality, crip rage, queer joy. Knitter, sewist, reptile herder, forever exhausted. She/her. 🏳️‍🌈 Compost the rich. linktr.ee/dremmasheppard

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Thank you for this! Seeing it broken down in a non-UK context too helps me wrap my head around how it's enacted. FWIW my issue is very specifically w a particular segment of my academic field who are either actively doing this, or pretending it isn't 'relevant' - the discourse has always been awful
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Lia @liasae.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
So let’s break this down a touch more via the Swedish angle because it has been a thing for years (and I’ll admit it’s a bit annoying to see people notice it only now but hey better late than never I suppose). The exact way this has gotten wielded is psychiatrists pondering statistics aloud
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Exactly - autism diagnosis will be another hurdle.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
DM me the best email to reach you on?
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Right, fuck it. If you want to help write some sort of open letter or an article, do the DM slide. I have continual brain soup and if you've got an idea please say. If you don't have an idea but want to help also say.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Do let me know what you think!
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
I'm thinking this, along with some sort of ... template for the public consultation aspect, whenever that comes through. I'm not entirely sure where a letter would go tbh - maybe something aimed at MPs individually might be better. Or an article somewhere rather than a letter.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
I know that I'm yelling about this to people who are going to largely agree with me. That's the point. We - the disability studies people who know exactly why this is bad - need to get our collective shit together. This is our are we the baddies moment.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Or: you can't get care because you're autistic and therefore can't understand what trans is. That's it. That's how it will be used.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
You know how this will be used,right? Either you can't get on the wait list for gender-affirming medical care until you've been cleared for autism (but no funding to shorten those adult autism diagnosis wait lists!), good luck with adding a couple of extra years to that waiting time of several years
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
We - as a field - need to speak up. I know everything is on fucking fire right now. But this is something we actually have expertise in. We have ground to stand on here.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
This can absolutely fuck off into the sun for a host of reasons, not least because it comes from the position that being trans is *bad* (and this gets backed up by the position that being autistic is bad too, it doesn't matter which way you come at it). This isn't a fucking neutral position any more
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Hey, disability studies people. We need to talk about this: www.thepinknews.com/2025/04/28/n... - because we know where it's come from, right? You know that research behind this has come from people in our field, right?
thepinknews.com
NHS 'to test trans young people for autism and ADHD'
Trans young people will allegedly be 'screened' for autism and ADHD according to planned NHS guidance on youth gender clinics.
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Arthur Webber 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @bernietranders.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Genuinely if I had been outflanked on the left by Tim Martin and Wetherspoons and I considered myself to be a left wing politician, I would resign and spend the rest of my career in a cave reflecting on how I let my brain get so rotted by columnists about who shits where
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
Pretty much. Or maybe: crip which is only known/understood through being crip.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
I have still not decided if I like the blurring enough for a new portmanteau
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
Ontology is what we know (eg water is wet) and epistemology is the how we know it (eg empirical observation) - or ways of knowing. So cripistemology is crip ways of knowing. Crip-isto-ontology is a sort of ... crips know crip through doing/being crip
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
💯💯💯
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San Alland (they/San) @san-alland.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
Crip guests in my essay echo @emmas.bsky.social's "There is joy in the ashes of the future-not-to-be, there is pleasure in their discomfort with our joy and our rejection." Also online as a BSL video, with captions & audio description - and an embodied Footnote played by Deaf actor Ciaran Stewart.
youtu.be
"Writing from the Groin" video essay by Sandra Alland (BSL with AD and CC)
YouTube video by BOPTheatre
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
As both 1 and 3, I'm sort of into this. I would love to persuade Sam to shit in a box, but he would rather hold it for *days*
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
... this is a magnificent idea (also, thank you!)
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Oh no, I meant it in a very ... self-snarky way. I'm glad you liked the paper!
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
I am a Very Serious Academic
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Thank you! 😊
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Thank you! I recommend reading it with a biscuit.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
I'm moderately proud of it, and very grateful to the editors of Feminist Theory for letting me fuck about with ideas. And whoever reviewed it and didn't call me a fuckwit immediately, they were all ace.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Lads, I am very rubbish at posting here, but: I wrote a thing, and it is now out with Feminist Theory. doi.org/10.1177/1464... - it's called The Necessary Pleasures of the Crip Killjoy and it's about thinking with brain fog and discomfort and violence and joy in refusal.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
One thing that I noticed this time around is that the "discussion" of giving racists airtime (as a way to put people off) is apparently eternal.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
Students largely horrified at the language, but they're about to be asked for modern-day equivalences...
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
Ending this week in Social Theory with "It Ain't Half Racist Mum" from Stuart Hall (and Box of Broadcasts) - as rounding up Hall's work on TV discourse, encoding/decoding.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Thank you! It definitely threw some of our more ... writing-first colleagues. But it was super fun and I've been using lots with students too.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
You should read it (and the rest of the compassionate pedagogies section) if you want to think about how to give a shit about your students as whole people. You should read ours if you like the idea of doing this through the medium of felt tip pens.
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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
And remember, Stock resigned voluntarily, after receiving the full & unconditional backing of the university. Possibly because she thought she was getting a new gig at the University of Grievance, Austin...
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Ellen Roche @ellroche.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Disappeared Tufts Human Dev. PhD student Rumesya Ozturk is also a graduate of Teachers College - she’s a dev. psychologist studying children’s media & prosocial development. She also bakes without recipes and binge-watches cartoons. She is our colleague & she was abducted on the street w/ our tax $.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Magnificently, I have a publication out. Myself, Tamar MacLellan and Erika Hawkes wrote about what an arts approach did for us when talking about trauma in HE. It's in the Journal of Learning Development in HE: doi.org/10.47408/jld...
doi.org
Thinking through drawing: an arts-based approach to trauma-informed pedagogy | Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education
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Merry Hadaway @kindjourneys.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Oh this is a *really* good point! 🧵
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
Now taking suggestions for where I left my sunglasses.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
We also wandered through gender and risk - and the impact of transition and hormones on risk-taking behaviours. Absolutely not where I planned to go - but sometimes the best bit is letting students play with ideas.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Today had one of those seminars which went off track from the beginning, but was nonetheless great. We should have talked about risk as social/cultural. And we sort of did - but we talked about risk vs fear, the orgasm gap, student loans, and crafting.
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KJ Charles @kjcharleswriter.com · 18/03/2025
can Labour please, please just tot up the number of voters with a) more than ten million quid and b) less than ten million quid, and do the fucking maths on what the country would prefer.
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Joseph Rowntree Foundation @jrf-uk.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall's speech today laid out plans to cut disability and sickness benefits by billions. ❌ No truly moral choice would leave disabled people without support designed to allow them to lead a dignified life, or facing hardship. 1/4
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
I just want a working meter. This is apparently too much to ask.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Today: trying to get my smart meter fixed, organising training, writing seminar. Maybe screaming into the void
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Lucy Burke @lucyburkemcr.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Two templates - one for people who are directly affected and one for allies. Please write to your MP and let them know how immoral, counterproductive and devastating- these cuts will be www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/campaigns-an...
inclusionlondon.org.uk
Act Now: Write to Your MP About Welfare Benefit Cuts
Take Action, Today
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
The scriptwriters for Doctor Odyssey are trying to make orcas the bad guys and it's not working.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Today's seminar discussed the selfie as cultural product and I am now going to crumble to dust
media.tenor.com
a cartoon character says " the very instant i became old " in front of a red phone
Alt: Prof Farnsworth from Futurama - a wrinkled old man with a very pointy bald head,wearing a lab coat. He says "the very instant i became old"
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Dr Matilda Fitzmaurice @matildaf.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
This is such a vital piece by @davehitchcock.bsky.social on the university funding crisis, which has been a decade in the making. www.historyworkshop.org.uk/education/a-...
historyworkshop.org.uk
A Decade of Crisis
The UK's universities are in crisis. Dave Hitchcock on how the sector became 'broken' and why it must be understood as an interdependent system.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
I am now *that* person whose pets are busy being absolute clowns while I'm doing a Proper Teams Meeting. Muting myself because SQUONKY TOYS TIME.
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
We interrupt today's doom scrolling with this, which is very informative
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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Today I am panic-reading before reading group, meeting a dissertation student, and discussing research and teaching. And preparing for my mum's arrival tomorrow.
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