Disability researchers aim to reverse the trend

The Researchers for Change initiative is run in collaboration between the centres for disability research at Uppsala University and Umeå University. The discussions started last year, when report after report showed that the situation of people with disabilities in Sweden had deteriorated.

“Last year, a number of major bodies (the National Board of Health and Welfare, the Swedish Institute for Human Rights and the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) raised the alarm that things are going in the wrong direction when it comes to the realisation of human rights for people with disabilities in Sweden and that public measures for this group are declining,” says Therése Fridström Montoya.

The aim of Researchers for Change is to jointly discuss and actively promote information, debate and understanding in the area. In 2025, three digital meetings will be held, followed by a physical meeting in November, taking place in Uppsala.

“At the first event in February, we had around 60 participants for three hours on Zoom, which is impressive,” says Sara Riggare, operations development officer at CFF.

Coordinating researchers around the country

We meet at the Biomedical Centre (BMC) in Uppsala, where CFF is based. The centre has been in existence since 1988. In addition to bringing together disability researchers at Uppsala University, it has a coordinating responsibility for a Forte-funded network of disability researchers throughout the country.

“We reach out to all disability researchers in Sweden, including doctoral students. They are often very committed and feel quite alone in their fields, so they benefit greatly from contact with each other,” says Riggare.

In total, around 400 researchers in Sweden belong to the network. Research on disability is not a separate field of research but is conducted in many different subject areas.

“There are disability researchers everywhere. It’s not just those you might spontaneously think of such as medical or social work researchers, but also engineers involved in the development of assistive technology, researchers in community planning and so on,” says Fridström Montoya.

Very timely

The national initiative in 2025 is very timely, she observes. Just a few weeks before the interview, the Parliamentary Ombudsman issued an alert that the application of the Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (LSS) in the municipalities is substandard and will be specially reviewed in 2025. At the same time, the Swedish National Audit Office has begun a national audit of the application of LSS in the municipalities.

“Even though researchers are supposed to be objective and neutral in their research, we can nevertheless say with certainty that many of us recognise that things are going in the wrong direction. Together we have a stronger voice. If many of us stand behind a message, we are more likely to eb heard than if we are alone,” Fridström Montoya says.

Can be a counterforce

The first meeting was themed “From the role of research to the role of the researcher”, with an open discussion on how researchers can contribute and act as a counterforce to negative developments.

“When we get together and start discussing, we come up with a lot of new ideas on how to bring existing knowledge out into society and put it to use. But also ideas about what new knowledge is needed and new ways of researching this,” says Fridström Montoya. “We hope that 2025 will be a kind of turning point, when disability researchers put their foot down and protested. The initiative exists to create hope and provide forward momentum.”

Annica Hulth