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Journal Celebrates 15th Anniversary

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An influential Disability Studies journal founded by a Liverpool Hope University academic is celebrating its 15th anniversary.   

The now long-running Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies was created by Hope’s Professor of Disability Studies, David Bolt, in what he describes as the ‘scorching hot summer of 2006’.

Focusing on representations of disability, the journal is described by publisher Liverpool University Press as an ‘essential disability studies journal for scholars whose work concentrates on the portrayal of disability.’

Professor Bolt says he’s proud to have witnessed the journal go from strength to strength, progressing from an online publication that was published twice a year to the present quarterly that is available around the world in high quality print and electronic formats.

Editor-in-Chief Professor Bolt says he’s ‘keen to commend the whole editorial board, including the book reviews and comments editors’, which he insists has been the journal’s ‘key strength from the start’. 

Accordingly, this year Liverpool University Press handed Dr Johnson Cheu, of Michigan State University, and Dr Cynthia Wu, of Indiana University, Outstanding Journal Reviewers Awards for their work on the journal.

Professor Bolt, Director of Hope’s Centre for Culture & Disability Studies, adds: “I am extremely proud to reflect on what the journal has done since it was founded - and I also look forward to all the general and special issues planned for the coming years.”

The journal has been part of the esteemed Project MUSE collection - an academic collaboration providing content for the scholarly community across the world - for more than a decade. 

More recently, it was indexed in Scopus - the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature - while last year’s CiteScore of 0.2 has now increased to 0.4.

The 46th issue of the journal (JLCDS, 15.3, 2021) has now been published. 

Learning Difficulties: Histories and Cultures is guest edited by Hope colleague’s Dr Owen Barden, Associate Professor of Disability Studies, and Dr Tina Cook, Visiting Professor of Education. 

The special issue features articles on distress, resistance, down syndrome, simulacrum, the good life, happiness, ecological performance, and activism. In so doing, the issue brings together the work of scholars from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia.

For further information head here


Published on 23/08/2021