'Where did Grandad's eyes go?' - A journey with disability and difference in PE and sport

As a youngster Professor Hayley Fitzgerald remembers being bemused by her Grandad’s blindness and asking her mum ‘where did Grandad’s eyes go’

Then there was Aidan, the son of family friends. He didn’t visit much because he lived in a residential institution with other people experiencing severe learning disabilities. Hayley and her sisters didn’t usually play with him, they thought he was strange.

During an undergraduate work placement, Hayley supported Mandy, an adult experiencing a learning disability, this encounter was unfamiliar and confronting.

When teaching, Professor Fitzgerald often shares these and other reflections with undergraduate students. She does this because they need to hear of her early experiences and vulnerabilities of being with disabled people. It can reassure them before their school placement with young disabled people. Importantly, it helps to start frank conversations about understandings of disability and the position and place of disabled people within society.

There has been much journeying since her initial encounters with disabled people and during this inaugural professorial lecture Hayley will reflect on the ebb and flow of her personal and professional journey with disability and difference in physical education and sport.

As an earlier career researcher, Professor Fitzgerald published “Still feeling like a spare piece of luggage”? Embodied experiences of (dis)ability in physical education and school sport (2005). In part, this paper highlights how a normative culture is etched into physical education and sport, and how this can lead to less favourable experiences for some young people, including those experiencing disabilities. Twenty years on, in this inaugural lecture, Hayley revisits if young people ‘still feel like a spare piece of luggage’ and consider three questions: Can every-body be included in physical education and sport? How can we conduct research to include every-body? And what theoretical resources can we use to help explain the experiences of every-body in physical education and sport. Hayley hopes the journey you navigate with her during this inaugural lecture will heighten your awareness of why we should concern ourselves with disability and difference.

Every-body does matter in physical education and sport, and this includes young disabled people.

Professor Hayley Fitzgerald

Professor Hayley Fitzgerald is a Professor of Disability Sport within the Carnegie School of Sport at Leeds Beckett University in the UK. Hayley enjoyed a career in disability sport as a development officer before taking up academic posts at Loughborough University and Leeds Beckett University. She is an internationally recognised expert in the area of disability, physical education and youth sport. Hayley is committed to including all young disabled people within research and has been at the forefront of developments associated with creating accessible and participatory research approaches to data collection. In more recent years, Hayley’s research has adopted an intersectional lens in order to better understand how different people, often challenged in their engagement with physical education and sport, might be better served through policy and practice.

Professor Hayley Fitzgerald’s research activities have culminated in multiple award-winning publications which have helped to shape the field. She is regularly invited to give keynote presentations at national and international conferences and is currently a Visiting Professor of Disability Sport at the University of Worcester. Hayley is actively involved in teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students, and believes their education is key to ensuring the next generation of physical education teachers and sports leaders promote inclusive opportunities for all. Currently, Hayley is a Director of Unorthobox, a community interest group supporting people from all backgrounds to participate in ‘non-contact’ boxing. She is also a boxing coach at the University of Bradford and is soon to become a volunteer skateboarding coach at the LS-Ten skatepark in Leeds.

This lecture is part of Leeds Beckett university's inaugural professional lecture series.