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About the School of Disability Studies

The School of Disability Studies is the first in Canada to provide a degree education exclusively from a disability studies perspective.  

The program is built upon foundations of inclusion and social justice, and offers an approach that is consistent with Toronto Metropolitan University’s reputation for professionally relevant education.

Integrating theory and practice, our students and faculty pursue scholarship that serves, shapes and animates disability movements in Canada and globally.

Drawing from the work of scholars, artists and activists and building from students’ personal and professional experiences, our program engages learners in a transformative process of reflection, debate and discovery.

Disability Studies takes up disability as a sociopolitical and sociocultural phenomenon that we create together through our relationships.

It is an interdisciplinary field of scholarship that originates from the disability rights movement, aspires to disability justice work and animates disability community.

Disability Studies interrogates the values we give to bodies and minds and to how we constitute what are ‘livable lives’.  

The field thinks through how we make meaning of people, human rights issues and social justice issues, together with other equity-based theories and social movements.

In this work, we understand disability as desirable, agentive, generative, creative and as a site of critique, solidarity and belonging.

  • AODA Alliance
  • Canadian Association for Community Living
  • Canadian Centre for Disability Studies
  • Canadian Disability Studies Association
  • Centre for Independent Living Toronto
  • Community Living Ontario
  • Creative Users
  • Feminist Art Gallery
  • Greater Toronto Area Disability Coalition
  • iHuman
  • Institute for Research and Development on Inclusion and Society (IRIS)
  • RedLab
  • SALTY
  • Springtide Resources
  • Strength based Parenting Initiative
  • Tangled Arts + Disability
  • Toronto Biennial