Owen Barden
Owen Barden
Owen is Assistant Professor in Intellectual Disability and Inclusion at the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities (TCPID) within the School of Education at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He is the Course Co-ordinator for the highly innovative Level 5 Certificate in Arts, Science and Inclusive Applied Practice offered by TCPID. Owen joined TCPID in October 2024 after twelve years at the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University. During that time he taught on a range of undergraduate and Masters programmes relating to disability studies in education and special educational needs. He was also Programme Director for the Professional Doctorate programme, which comprised awards in Education, Social Work, and Health & Social Care.
Owen holds a Doctorate in Education awarded by the University of Sheffield in 2011, and this thesis project explored relationships between dyslexia, technology, literacies and learning. His most recent work has focussed on cultural histories of learning disability, and devising innovative and participatory methods for researching those histories. Current and future projects are building on this work through developing partnerships with academic researchers and advocacy groups in places like the Open University and the University of Iceland.
Current Research Projects
Learning With Learning Disability: What Learning Disability Can Teach Us About Being Human.Due for manuscript submission in March 2025, this monograph will make a contribution to the Autocritical Disability Studies series published by Routledge. The book aims to use the concept of “learning disability” to explore what it means to be human.
Publications: Journal Articles
• Barden, O., Lawford, N., Gunnarsdottir, H., Stefansdottir, G.V., Tilley, L. & Walden, S. (2024) Emotionally Entwined Narratives: A Polyphonic Trialogue on Learning Disability History Research. Frontiers in Sociology (under review)
• Barden, O., Walden, S. J., Bird, N., Cairns, S., Currie, R., Evans, L., Jackson, S., Oldnall, E., Oldnall, S., Price, D., Robinson, T., Tahir, A., Wright, C. & Wright, C. (2022). Antonia's story: Bringing the past into the future. British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 50 (2) 1– 12. https://doi.org/10.1111/bld.12447
• Barden, O., Walden, S. J., Bird, N., Cairns, S., Currie, R., Evans, L., Jackson, S., Oldnall, E., Oldnall, S., Price, D., Robinson, T., Tahir, A., Wright, C. & Wright, C. (2022). Antonia's story: Bringing the past into the future. British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 50 (2) 1– 12. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09650792.2021.1899952"
• Barden, O. (2020) Demanding Money with Menaces: Fear and Loathing in the Archipelago of Confinement. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 14 (1) 91-108 https://doi.org/10.3828/jlcds.2019.13