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Hi All,

I'm new to the list. My name is Piers Gooding and I'm a PhD candidate from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

I'd like to ride the slipstream of the issue Tina raised and make a request. Myself and my colleagues/ allies/ friends, Merinda Epstein, Cath Roper, and Flick Grey, are working on an article about 'critical user/ survivor studies' in the university, and the need to create a space in universities for the first-person perspective, sometimes called 'native theorists', on experiences of profound distress, madness, what-gets-labelled-as-mental-illness, and what is perhaps best known on this list as psychosocial disabilities. The article is largely drawn from a lecture given at the Melbourne Free University, called, 'Madness in the Academy', which spoke to many of the issues that Tina referred to in reference to Margaret Price's work. The lecture can be found archived here, http://melbournefreeuniversity.org/?page_id=632

We are looking for materials in the formal (academic) and informal (blog, organisational, activist) literature that speak to this issue, or examples of where this is beginning in uni's and technical colleges. We are primarily interested in the rising momentum toward creating a space for 'madness in the academy' that addresses not only the collective knowledge of first-person perspectives, but that also adresses reasonable accommodation and inclusive design in universities and other places of tertiary learning - ways that address structural discrimination which so often lead to people with psychosocial disabilities being excluded. Any materials you may have on this topic would be much appreciated.

In support,
Piers