Four white women are gathered close together wearing black, red and blue graduation robes and caps. They are all smiling and looking to the left of the camera. Three of the women are standing and one is sitting in a wheelchair. In the background are some steps and other people milling around. Image owned by Katie Newstead.
Four white women are gathered close together wearing black, red and blue graduation robes and caps. They are all smiling and looking to the left of the camera. Three of the women are standing and one is sitting in a wheelchair. In the background are some steps and other people milling around. Image owned by Katie Newstead.

Politics, Parties and PhDs: Disabled Women and Student Life

Disabled women rarely feature in cultural depictions and stereotypes of student life. Due to poorly designed buildings and inaccessible learning conditions, universities have typically been unwelcoming environments for disabled people. Despite these barriers, disabled students have always been present on campus, in lectures halls and at student bars and discos. This essay highlights the stories of three disabled women from the 1970s to the early noughties. Their diverse experiences of student life range from parties and student sit-ins in South West London, to representing the student body during the Northern Ireland peace process, to completing a PhD in Film Studies. Collectively, their stories powerfully disrupt some of the inaccurate myths about disabled people’s everyday lives and the assumption that disability is incompatible with student life.

Text by Beckie Rutherford | 29.08.23

Cover Photo: Four white women are gathered close together wearing black, red and blue graduation robes and caps. They are all smiling and looking to the left of the camera. Three of the women are standing and one is sitting in a wheelchair. In the background are some steps and other people milling around. Image owned by Katie Newstead.

Kirsten Hearn

In 1975, Kirsten Hearn joined Goldsmiths, University of London and became the first blind art student in England. She spent the next four years there, initially completing a foundation course and then a three-year undergraduate degree in fine art. In an interview in 2012, Kirsten recalled that ‘It was not easy, trying to get them to make reasonable adjustments for me’, highlighting the total absence of grants for specialist equipment as one of the main barriers. (Interview with Kirsten Hearn by Rachel Cohen, February 2012, Sisterhood and After: the Women’s Liberation Oral History Project, reference C1420/44, © The British Library Board and the University of Sussex. All quotations in this section are taken from this interview.) She lived in an all-girls hall of residence and quickly became friends with the nine other girls with whom she shared a kitchen (they had one fridge between them). The location of their halls was ‘very handy for staggering in from the bar’ and as such, Kirsten spent much of her time socialising. ‘I loved it. I mean it was just party time, you know, you didn’t have to get on a bus to go to the party because the student bar was literally at the end of my road and there was always discos and stuff.’ Having a full maintenance grant also gave her the opportunity to develop independence and she relished the freedom of being able to buy her own clothes, food and alcohol for the first time. Another taste of adult life was being able to hire the dining room in her hall of residence and host a private party for her twentieth birthday. Kirsten fondly reminisced about how she ‘invited all my friends, old and new, and we had a raving time, it was fabulous.’

There was generally a very left-wing culture at Goldsmiths and Kirsten soon became involved in the Students Union. However, much of student politics in the mid-1970s was inaccessible for blind people due to the lack of information available in alternative formats such as braille and audio recordings. Kirsten graduated from Goldsmiths in 1979, and applied unsuccessfully to do a postgraduate course at the Royal College of Art. Instead, she joined South West London College and trained to be a typist, and it was here that she became passionate about politics and ‘learnt to be a student activist’. After attending a conference of the National Students Union, she joined both the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Students’ Alliance. According to Kirsten, she ‘got involved in a whole load of stuff and brought it all back to South West London and tried to organise a revolution, as you do.’ Examples of their organising included an occupation and several student sit-ins. At the end 1980 Kirsten applied again to the Royal College of Art and this time was accepted. Despite finding it a ‘notoriously unpolitical’ place, she continued developing her personal politics, particularly surrounding the intersection of feminism and disability issues. In 1982, Kirsten became one of the first disabled women to feature on a front cover of the national feminist magazine Spare Rib. She later played a key role in campaigning for the Women’s Liberation Movement to become more inclusive and to better represent the experiences of women who were disabled, Black, working class, or Jewish.

Front cover of a magazine which has a vibrant red background and the title ‘Spare Rib’ in large text at the top. In smaller text below it reads ‘Cuba’s sexual politics’, ‘Sappho – Out of history’s closet’ and ‘Blind women – ‘help’ on our terms’. Photographs of three blind, white women are arranged alongside the text. The first woman [Kirsten Hearn] is wearing dungarees and a long coat and walking using a white cane. The second is wearing an apron and is smiling at the camera as she mixes ingredients in a large bowl. The third has a toddler sat on her lap and they are looking at pictures together. Beckie Rutherford personal copy.
Front cover of a magazine which has a vibrant red background and the title ‘Spare Rib’ in large text at the top. In smaller text below it reads ‘Cuba’s sexual politics’, ‘Sappho – Out of history’s closet’ and ‘Blind women – ‘help’ on our terms’. Photographs of three blind, white women are arranged alongside the text. The first woman [Kirsten Hearn] is wearing dungarees and a long coat and walking using a white cane. The second is wearing an apron and is smiling at the camera as she mixes ingredients in a large bowl. The third has a toddler sat on her lap and they are looking at pictures together. Beckie Rutherford personal copy.
Rosemary Frazer

In our recent interview, Rosemary introduced herself as someone from an ordinary working class family who grew up in Belfast during the Troubles conflict. (Beckie Rutherford personal interview with Rosemary Frazer (June 2023). All quotations in this section are taken from this interview.) Although teachers described her as ‘clever’ and ‘a bit academic’ she didn’t consider the idea of going to university because nobody in her family had done so. Her boyfriend at the time, Tommy, persuaded her to think about it and in 1993 she began an undergraduate degree in Modern Humanities at the University of Ulster. Initially, Rosemary wanted to remain in Belfast and go to Queen’s University but was put off by both the inaccessible buildings and one tutor’s insinuation that she expected easy grades because of being a wheelchair user. This kind of discrimination was completely legal at the time because disability equality legislation did not exist in the UK until 1995. Rosemary recalled the anger she felt at having no legal rights and the fact that it was around this time that she ‘started to become very politically disabled.’

Upon arriving at university, Rosemary felt like ‘a fish out of water’ for being both working class and disabled. Most of her peers were middle-class, non-disabled and grammar school educated. Despite these differences, Rosemary assured me that ‘I loved my time at university. I felt for the first time like I was competing with people on an equal footing, and I was doing really well. It completely changed my life in the way I believe university should do.’ She was soon voted by her year group to represent the student body and later on, was elected to the role of Women’s Officer as well as being invited to become the university’s first Disability Officer. According to Rosemary, one of her greatest accomplishments was successfully campaigning for the Student Union to be made accessible to wheelchair users. She was told by university staff that ‘they had never had a disabled student wanting to go to the bar before’, to which she responded ‘well, you do now!’. This campaign was not just about being able to buy a drink in the bar – it was about disabled students’ right to access an important community space, one where students congregated between or after lectures, sharing sympathy, advice and ideas. All of Rosemary’s friends boycotted the bar until it was made accessible – which turned out to be as simple as turning on the lift. Another important achievement was persuading the university to install both mirrors and condom dispensers in every accessible toilet on campus. Again, this request was initially met with bemusement, which was a striking reflection of the widespread naivety about disabled people’s sex lives.

Due to her visibility sat at the front of lecture halls, Rosemary told me that she became more confident and ‘a bit cheeky’. After receiving an exceptional mark in a term paper at the end of her first year, the professor of American Studies suggested that she major in the discipline and spend her third year studying in America. Rosemary recalled how she ‘hadn’t thought it was possible because I was disabled’ but in fact, the facilities and quality of access at the University of North Carolina turned out to be far superior to that of her university in Ulster. This was largely due to a significant shift in attitudes towards disability precipitated by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. When Rosemary arrived in 1995 there was already a service called Point To Point which provided free accessible transport around campus for disabled students. Furthermore, whenever a building was not suitable for her wheelchair, Rosemary received a personal apology from the university, something which was categorically ‘unheard of’ back home. Overall, the experience of studying abroad was invaluable for increasing Rosemary’s awareness of what could be made possible in terms of disability equality. 

Completing her final year back at the University of Ulster proved to be challenging for a number of reasons, not least of which was the ongoing peace process negotiation. Due to her role representing the student body, Rosemary was asked to speak to a number of politicians and offer her insight from a youth perspective. As she recalled, ‘I could not have been in Northern Ireland studying at a more important time in my country’s history, and in the midst of all of that you had other things going on’. After successfully graduating with a 2:1, Rosemary moved to London in 1997 (‘the day Princess Diana died’) to take up a job at the BBC. She decided against pursuing a Master’s degree ultimately because of her experience in America where she had witnessed firsthand what could be achieved in terms of disability equality. As she explained: ‘I felt less disabled in America because I faced fewer barriers ... I knew what could be done and I wanted to help in getting that done here’. Clearly, one of the most important outcomes of Rosemary’s time as a student was the enduring, ‘really beautiful’ friendships she made there. She described her group of friends as having ‘a very strong sense of social justice ... and I think that was part and parcel of growing up our generation in Northern Ireland, where we wanted something different. We knew it was coming to the end of the Troubles and we just wanted better lives.’

Katie (a white woman with short dark hair) is sat in her wheelchair close to the camera. She is holding a bound copy of her PhD thesis which reads ‘University of Exeter. A Games of Crones: Contemporary Hollywood Female Stars, Archetypes of Ageing Femininity, and the Cinematic Fairy Tale Reboot. Dr Katherine A. Newstead’. Image owned by Katie Newstead.
Katie (a white woman with short dark hair) is sat in her wheelchair close to the camera. She is holding a bound copy of her PhD thesis which reads ‘University of Exeter. A Games of Crones: Contemporary Hollywood Female Stars, Archetypes of Ageing Femininity, and the Cinematic Fairy Tale Reboot. Dr Katherine A. Newstead’. Image owned by Katie Newstead.
Dr Katie Newstead

Katie enrolled at the University of Exeter as a Film Studies undergraduate in 2007. Joining a busy community of students felt natural to her as she had come from a large primary and secondary school. Her main interest was in film analysis (rather than film-making) and as she recently told me, ‘I loved studying something that I had a passion for, and that I was good at’. (Beckie Rutherford email correspondence with Katie Newstead (July 2023). All quotations in this section are taken from this correspondence.) Throughout her time as a student, Katie lived at home with her mother in a rural location about half an hour from the nearest town. The contrasting vibrancy and diversity of campus life suited her because she ‘enjoyed being around people my own age, with similar – and also very different – interests.’ A particular novelty was being able to go out for meals and drinks with friends at a variety of different places. Living off-campus could be difficult and Katie admitted that she ‘missed out on a lot’ due to limited transport options and inadequate outside help. This was long before working from home became widely acceptable and disabled students were put at a disadvantage as a result.

In her everyday life on campus, Katie was supported by the Disability Advice and Support Centre (known as ‘AccessAbility’) who provided her with a notetaker, dictation software and a laptop. She was a student ambassador for AccessAbility, giving talks and advice to prospective applicants who were also wheelchair users. Although her lecturers were ‘brilliant’ at making adjustments in terms of timetabling and locations, the physical environment of the main campus was often challenging. For example, during Katie’s Master’s degree there was a major building operation taking place at the heart of campus which meant that her journey from seminars to the library (‘a two minute walk’) took her twenty minutes. Despite these difficulties, Katie excelled academically and she began studying for her PhD in 2013. She had known her supervisor, Professor Fiona Handyside, since she was an undergraduate and they developed a close working relationship. According to Katie, Fiona was ‘a constant source of encouragement, advice and honesty’ which earned her the nickname ‘fairy godmother’ (one of the characters analysed within Katie’s thesis on fairy tale films). Social media played an increasingly important role in Katie’s PhD research and like many researchers in the present day, she relied heavily on Twitter to create academic networks and discuss and share ideas. After completing her PhD, Katie taught at Exeter until the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and now has almost 17,000 followers on Twitter.

Katie (a white woman with short dark hair) is sat in her wheelchair next to her PhD supervisor, Fiona (a white woman with curly blonde hair). They are both smiling widely at the camera. In the background is a sunny garden with a lawn and flowers. Image owned by Katie Newstead.
Katie (a white woman with short dark hair) is sat in her wheelchair next to her PhD supervisor, Fiona (a white woman with curly blonde hair). They are both smiling widely at the camera. In the background is a sunny garden with a lawn and flowers. Image owned by Katie Newstead.

Kirsten, Rosemary and Katie’s stories showcase the vibrant diversity of disabled women’s experiences of student life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. They also reveal ongoing issues – largely concerning physical barriers – which have made it difficult for generations of disabled students to access and embrace student life in the same way as their non-disabled peers. Despite these barriers, disabled students continue to thrive on campus and remain a vital presence in student politics, as well as social and academic communities. The increasing visibility of disabled students is partly due to the activism and advocacy of women like Kirsten, Rosemary and Katie who continue to campaign for the rights of disabled people in the present day.

Beckie Rutherford (she/her) is a historian of disability, gender and sexuality in modern Britain. She completed her PhD at the University of Warwick in 2023.

You can find her on Twitter @BeckieRuthrford