3: Co-production, Participatory and Emancipatory Disability Research

In this chapter, we add context to Katy’s important words above – we detail the unique ways in which we have worked together as a project team of university-based academics and community-based disabled young co-researchers. In doing so, we detail the politics and practicalities of co-production. Co-production is now an established approach; however, as a diverse team we have developed inclusive research practices that engage with online and virtual social research methods in innovative ways. The use of the Internet has been argued to be transformative within social and educational research (Hewson, 2014). In Living Life to the Fullest, through virtual research environments, The Co-Researcher Collective has actively and meaningfully co-led inquiry – from the very beginning to its end. We centre such environments as highly beneficial to collaboration with one another, suggesting that social research technologies offer meaningful opportunities for valuing the embodied knowledges and lived experiences of disabled young people with life-limiting and life-threatening impairments (hereby LL/LTIs).