Law’s Role in Shaping and Responding to Disability and Motherhood

This hybrid one day event will be hosted by the School of Law at the University of Reading on 19 March 2025. The event will explore issues affecting disabled women and mothers in justice systems across family, health, mental capacity and public and administrative law. Ideals of motherhood do not often sit well with law’s response to disability. This seminar brings together academics, practitioners, policy-makers and those with lived experience across different areas of the law and justice system, to consider disabled women’s experiences of, and interactions with, motherhood and the law.

The workshop will explore three key areas for disability and law scholarship, approached from a broad socio-legal perspective: disability and motherhood in family relationships; disability and motherhood in health contexts; and disability and motherhood in public and administrative law. However, we strongly encourage proposals which operate at the intersection of these jurisdictions to understand disabled women’s experiences of law across the life course and in their everyday lives (rather than through courts or formal law).

We plan to publish an edited collection of some of the papers presented at the seminar. Further details will be provided on the day. Confirmed speakers include Professor Katy Burch, Beth Tarleton, Professor Beverley Clough, Professor Sheelagh McGuinness, and Dr Ciara Fitzpatrick.

This event is funded and supported by the SLSA and the Law, Justice and Society research group at the University of Reading.

Host or Publisher Dr Jaime Lindsey