Disability and Political Representation, a monograph co-authored with Elizabeth Evans, was published in March 2024 by Oxford University Press. It is available to order (hardback), read online, and as an audiobook.
The book explores how disabled people experience the various stages and aspects of the representation process, drawing upon extensive empirical research and a variety of qualitative and quantitative data. It discusses why increasing the number of disabled politicians matters, not only as a matter of justice and equality but also to better represent the issues and interests of importance to disabled people.
We identify a variety of ableist barriers prevent disabled people from fully participating in the political process, from disenfranchisement and inaccessible polling stations to prejudice within parties and a lack of financial support for candidates who require adjustments. The work shows that while the preferences of disabled citizens are currently under-represented in parliament, disabled representatives often draw on their lived experience to advocate for their interests. The concept of experiential representation is developed to help scholars and practitioners better navigate the concept of political representation, specifically as it relates to disability. Thus, the book explores how disability can help us think about the contours of political representation. It presents and analyses a range of diverse and original data, including qualitative data generated from interviews with disabled politicians and activists in the UK, quantitative survey data on the political attitudes and participation of disabled citizens from across Europe, and data from survey experiments examining voter perceptions of disabled politicians in the UK and the US.
At the Political Studies Association's 2026 Annual Conference our book Disability and Political Representation was awarded the W.J.M. MacKenzie Book Prize for the best book in the field of Political Studies published in 2024.
The prize panel said:
This timely and empirically rigorous intervention is the first study to focus on disability and political representation in the UK. The authors bring together perspectives from political science and disability studies, and draw upon methodologically diverse empirical data, much of it original. In so doing, they challenge dominant understandings of representation in theory and practice that marginalise and exclude disabled people. Beautifully written and clearly argued for both generalist and specialist reader, it deftly avoids getting mired in definitional disputes and theoretical dead-ends. At its core is an ethical stance which centres the experiences of disabled people and seeks to produce useful knowledge with real world implications for policy change, public understanding, and improvements to democratic politics.