The Criposium is a collaboration between King’s College London Disability+Intersectionality reading group and SOAS Crip Feminist reading group. It is also supported by the Decolonising SOAS Working Group.

It is a public symposium taking place on two Saturdays: 6th June and 13th June. We are currently seeking submissions to the event from scholars, artists and activists – details can be found here https://criposium.wordpress.com/.

The Criposium draws on this disruptive quality of ‘crip’ to provoke conversations centring the lived experiences of disabled people, particularly those who are also non-binary, trans, of colour.

The event has three key aims:

1. To challenge hegemonic discourses of normalcy that define disabled bodies and bodies of difference as ‘abnormal’ or ‘transgressive’;

2. To explore how ableism intersects with other forms of oppressions such as racism, sexism, trans/homophobia and class inequality;

3. To bring disabled academics and activists in conversation about how to build solidarity across multiple marginalised groups.

Standing by the belief ‘nothing about us without us’ and that all discussions about disability must involve those who live with disability, the Criposium centres disabled people as experts by experience and aims to break down the traditional divide between researcher and research subjects by fostering conversations between academics and disabled people on a level platform. The event will bring together scholars across the fields of disability studies, gender and queer studies, social sciences, and the humanities, as well as disabled artists and activists from the local community, to critique the construction of social identity and the politics of the body.

To accompany the discussions we will be holding a virtual exhibition of creative responses to the theme of crip intersectionality which will then be archived on the website gallery. Please see the website  for details on submission process, deadlines, event and access: https://criposium.wordpress.com/.