Introduction

Since the eighties concerns have been growing about the marketisation and commercialisation in universities. Indeed, a long hours culture, aggressive and unkind research culture was reported in a survey of academics (Wellcome Trust (2020). Recently, the number of academic staff with a disability in Scottish HE decreased by 845 between 2021/2022 (2175) to 2022/23 (1190) Higher Education Staff Statistics: UK, 2022/23 | HESA. This decline may partly be attributable to academics with disabilities and chronic illnesses leaving academia. Brown and Leigh (2018) argue that the final number is likely to be an under-representation as a result of non-disclosure as, especially for early career academics, there may be concern that revealing a disability or illness in research cultures (thought to be unkind, competitive and rewarding long hours cultures) can result in them not gaining employment. 

'Who cares’ reimagines research cultures that are kind and care(full) in both research policy and practice (Brannelly & Barnes, 2022). Identifying ableist and disablist discourses obviously benefits marginalised groups, whose situations are made more difficult through the various ways that discrimination can intersect (with gender, class, age and race). Our aim however is to use the lived experiences and expertise of disabled and chronically ill academics to improve research cultures for all. E.g., enhancing policy literacy, defaulting to hybrid and online events, ensuring accessible design, resources for collegial leadership and opportunities for slow scholarship. Tangible benefits for everyone to flourish through a critical evaluation of universal design is an important impact as its principles are considered (e.g., flexibility, simplicity, information clarity, etc).

Assessing a 'Universal design' approach: Introduced by American architect Ron Mace Universal design promotes design that is usable for all without need for adaptation What is Universal Design? – The UD Project.). Universal design principles, such as simplicity is not only for academics with impairments however as this promise is benefits for all.  Through a critical evaluation of a Universal design approach to our findings we will emphasize benefits to the ‘greatest possible extent’ in research cultures (fully aware that there is no one size-fits-all approach). 

Work Package 1: Fixing the Policy–Implementation Gap

Work Package One, led by Claire Graf, asks a deceptively simple question:

If universities have disability and inclusion policies, why do disabled staff still struggle?

The answer isn’t that the policies are bad. It’s that policies exist inside complex systems — networks of procedures, practices, human decisions, communication chains, and organisational culture. A policy only works if every part of the system that surrounds it works too. And right now, in most universities, that system misfires.

What WP1 Does

WP1 maps the entire ecosystem around disability and reasonable-adjustments policies:

• the written policy itself,
• the network of related policies it depends on,
• the implementation chain, and
• the human factors that shape day-to-day decision-making.

Using approaches drawn from systems engineering, aviation safety, and human factors, WP1 evaluates where things break down — not in theory, but in real institutional practice.

This includes analysing communication failures, workload pressures, bias, lack of training, culture, missing feedback loops, and the hidden labour currently pushed onto disabled staff. All of these influence whether a policy succeeds or stalls.

Why It Matters

Most universities assume that writing a clear policy is enough. But in real life, what a disabled staff member experiences depends on:

• whether their line manager knows the policy exists,
• whether HR or local admin understand how to apply it,
• whether related policies (absence, capability, hybrid work) reinforce it or contradict it,
• whether communication reaches the right people,
• and whether overloaded staff even have the bandwidth to follow procedures.

This is the implementation gap — the space between what a policy promises and what actually happens. And research shows it is large, persistent, and predictable. WP1 examines this gap using evidence and real-world cases, showing how human factors like distraction, pressure, lack of knowledge, or systemic norms quietly derail even the best policy.

WP1’s Contribution

Work Package One does three key things:

1. Treats policies as systems, not standalone documents.

A disability policy is only as effective as the network around it. WP1 identifies the subsystems that must align for inclusion to work in practice.

2. Diagnoses implementation failures using human-factors analysis.

Borrowing from aviation’s “Dirty Dozen” and root-cause frameworks, WP1 shows how predictable human limitations — not malice — explain most breakdowns.

3. Provides strategies to actually close the gap.

This includes universal design, choice architecture, better communication structures, reducing the labour of inclusion, and shifting responsibility away from disabled staff and onto institutions where it belongs.

In Short

Work Package One tackles the real reason inclusion fails: 

Universities don’t have an implementation problem because people don’t care — they have one because systems and human factors were never designed with real-world behaviour in mind.

By understanding the policy ecosystem and the human beings inside it, WP1 lays the foundation for change that actually works — not just on paper, but in practice, for the people who need it.

 
Work Package 2

Work Package 2,  led by Paula Jacobs   is based on interviews conducted with academics who self-identify as disabled, chronically ill or neurodivergent. Here, we seek to understand both the enablers and challenges they experience in their research, whilst we also explore experiences of support and ‘care’. 

We are inspired by the five key elements of an 'ethics of care research manifesto':  caring about (attentiveness), caring for (responsibility), caregiving (competence), care receiving (responsiveness), and caring with (solidarity) which relates to participatory methodologies (Brannelly (2018). 

As we are not doing participatory research we are inspired to ‘take care’  emphasising strategies such as transparency, reflection, and inclusive practices, ensuring that the research process and outcomes align with principles of equity.   

'Caring for our participants' during fieldwork' means:

1.  Before an interview we offer copies of the interview schedule (in a format that is best for them) so individuals can see what topics we might cover.
2. Interviews are online, f-t-f or written responses (or a combination of these).
3. Participants are given the opportunity to review the transcripts; summaries or any articles published with quotations from them. They can if they want change, edit and delete any parts of the transcript without offering an explanation for doing so.

 'Caring for participant's voices after fieldwork' means: 

1. ‘Collaborative analysis’ where team members work together asynchronously and synchronously discussing the transcripts and extracts from them.
2.  Slowing down and collaborating through the analysis we can acknowledging the placement of the extracts in the interview as a whole and through this positioning we hope to remedy the ‘fragmentation of quotes’ by contextualising (de-fragmenting) them in the whole.  
3. We push back against the idea that there is a sole analyst (an idea that is perpetuated by the qualitative data analysis packages that make it difficult to share coding as part of that analysis).

Work Package 3 

Work Package 3, is led by Gill Haddow, but with contributions from all of the team, she explores the substantive issues around ‘taking care’ and ‘slow scholarship’. The latter is a form of resistance to the need for speed in academic work, which argues for a more considered conscientious approach to academic work (Berg and Seeber 2016: x). The benefits are numerous. It allows individuals to be more care-full (Brannelly & Barnes, 2022), as they no longer feel pressured to produce more and can therefore focus on less.  

We seek to reclaim time, through experimenting, when possible, with ‘deliberation over acceleration’ (Berg and Seeber 2016: x) with working ‘slow and fast’ and seeking opportunities to slow down (at different speeds and times, that include small behavior changes to considering large scale interventions (such as grant funding deadlines).

And yet our experiments with slow scholarship will offer insights about how realistic it is. For example, those who have precarious contracts or are at an early stage in their career may be most at risk of ‘the need for speed’. We recognize that working within a neoliberal academe requires us to be clear about the things we can and we cannot do, recognizing our own positions and power within the institute, and making visible when we become complicit.

Care is used as an adjective (to be caring) and a noun (to take, give or receive care); it is an action (to care about, care with or care for) and also an attitude ‘I don’t care’ and can have negative connotations (to be taken into care) and is often associated with vulnerability (health, elderly or child care). All of us will need care and will give care at some point in our lives. So we take ‘care’ as a ‘matter of concern’ (Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds’ (2017) Maria Puig De La Bellacasa)

In their definition of care, Tronto and Fisher frame care as being ‘in everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair our world’ (1990 p. 40).  

We ask what our participants understand by care but we also ask that same question of ourselves? What do we understand 'care' to be in the research team – Team meeting observed/Guided Discussions about how we take ‘care’)

How will care and slow scholarship sit together now and in the future? In an era of austerity, individuals taking back time to work with care will be challenging and experimenting with slow scholarship in a culture that focusses upon the fast production of knowledge as indicators of success is at odds with the current climate. This, we argue, makes it more important as an endeavor not less.