Project Leader for the
case study "Doing Disability at the Bank: Discovering the Work and
Informal Learning/Teaching Done by Disabled Bank Employees"
Dr.
Kathryn Church has been researching issues of disability since the mid-1980s.
Trained as a clinician, she moved into community organizing and policy
development as the first Coordinator of “Building a Framework for
Support,” a national initiative of the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Her doctorate in sociology explored psychiatric survivor involvement in
community mental health policy. In the course of producing this work,
she became a strong ally of the survivor movement. Dr. Church has spent
the past ten years doing community-based research with survivor organizations
engaged in knowledge development, specifically in defining their own approach
to economic development. She has become skilled in attending to insider/outsider
relations with respect to disability communities, in using qualitative
methods that are sensitive to the subjectivities of disabled people, and
in using alternative forms of writing and research dissemination that
meet community needs. Author of “Forbidden Narratives: Critical
Autobiography as Social Science” and a range of academic papers,
Dr. Church’s research output also includes a dozen plain-text documents,
as well as production consultation for a documentary length film called
“Working Like Crazy.”. From 1997 to 2001, she was curator
of an award-winning museum exhibit entitled “Fabrications: Stitching
Ourselves Together.” It has completed a three year tour of Canada.
