Sites of Conscience

Sites of Conscience charts the importance of public engagement with histories, memories, and lived experiences of institutions in forging new directions in social justice with and for disabled people and people experiencing mental distress, in a context where deinstitutionalization has failed to fully recognise, redress, and repair the ongoing impacts of institutions.

Elisabeth Punzi is a clinical psychologist and an associate professor in the Department of Social Work and the Center for Critical Heritage Studies at Gothenburg University, Sweden. With Christoph Singer and Cornelia Wächter, she is co-editor of Negotiating Institutional Heritage and Wellbeing, and, with Annica Engström, of Mad Studies: Kulturarv och Konst. Linda Steele is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. She is the author of Disability, Criminal Justice, and Law. With Claire Spivakovsky and Penelope Weller, she is co-editor of The Legacies of Institutionalisation: Disability, Law and Policy in the ‘Deinstitutionalised’ Community, and, with Gerard Goggin and Jessica Robyn Cadwallader, of Normalcy and Disability: Intersections among Norms, Law, and Culture.

Contributors: Niklas Altermark, Gavin Andrews, Nicole Baur, Verusca Calabria, a conversation with Bec Dean, Lily Hibberd and Wart, Elena Demke, Rory du Plessis, Rob Ellis, Nigel Ingham, an interview with Alex Green, an interview with Janet Overfield-Shaw, Robin Kearns, Evadne Kelly, Helena Lindbom, Justine Lloyd, Nicole Matthews, David T. Mitchell, Graham Moon, Geoffrey Reaume, Carla Rice, Jen Rinaldi, Cecilia Rodéhn, Kate Rossiter, Sharon L. Snyder, Matilda Svensson Chowdhury, Liz Tilley, Jan Walmsley

This ambitious collection extends the boundaries of sites of conscience. Engaging with memory and place-based research, the contributors explore activism, agency, and identity to reimagine disability and Mad histories and futures.

Allison C. Carey, coauthor of Allies and Obstacles: Disability Activism and Parents of Children with Disabilities:

In this pathbreaking book, Punzi and Steele bring together a diverse set of leading scholars and activists to engage theoretically and practically with the creation of sites of conscience related to disability and institutionalization.