The Citizen’s Project
The Citizen’s Project
The CitPro Project is one of three appointed Excellence in Research projects at VID Specialized University 2020-2024.
The CitPro Project is one of three appointed Excellence in Research projects at VID Specialized University 2020-2024.
About the Citizen’s Project - CitPro
Our vision is to provide a rich source of knowledge to inform the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in education and practice.
The overall objective is that CitPro evolves into Norway’s Centre of Excellence for collaborative disability research on everyday citizenship.
The CitPro Aims
- Develop capacity within VID to conduct internationally-orientated research related to the everyday citizenship of persons with disabilities, including persons with dementia.
- Enhance students’ understanding of everyday citizenship in the context of disability.
- Create opportunities to advance and share knowledge of everyday citizenship for persons in vulnerable situations, in collaboration with community partners.
- Build collaborations with community partners to develop ethical and inclusive research practices.
The CitPro Team
The CitPro Project is led jointly by Professor Ruth Bartlett, VID Specialised University, Oslo, Faculty of Health Studies and Professor Inger Marie Lid, Faculty of Health Studies and Centre for Diaconia and Professional practice.
Team members:
- Professor Anita Gjermestad, PhD
- Professor Kirsten Jæger Fjetland, PhD
- Professor Oddgeir Synnes, PhD
- Associate Professor Ana Koncul, PhD
- Associate Professor Anna Chalachanová, PhD
- Associate Professor Ingebjørg Haugen, PhD
- Postdoctoral fellow/Associate Professor Rosemarie van den Breemer, PhD
- Doctoral fellow Elizabeth Onyedikachi George, MA
- Doctoral fellow Sadeta Demić, MA
CiTPro Work Packages
- WP1: Investigate Cases of Everyday Citizenship for Persons in Vulnerable Situations
Lead: Ruth Bartlett and Inger Marie Lid
Aim: To find and examine cases of everyday citizenship, and translate these into teaching materials.
Collaborators: Anita Gjermestad and Kirsten J. Fjetland.
- WP1a: Higher Education for People with Intellectual Disabilities
Leads: Inger Marie Lid & Anna Chalachanová
Aim: To create a higher education program worth 30 ECTS credits, with academic, educational, and social dimensions for students with intellectual disabilities.
Read more about the first generations of students with intellectual disabilities at VID here.
Collaborators: Colleagues from Institute of health, people with intellectual disabilities, Oslo municipality, Norsk forbund for utviklingshemmede (NFU), Nasjonalt kompetansemiljø om utviklingshemming (NAKU), Stiftelsen SOR.
Finances: The project is supported by Stiftelsen DAM
- WP2: Research Ethics
Lead: Inger Marie Lid
Aim: To build a sound research ethic for research projects using participatory research methodologies, including participatory action research.
Collaborators: Rosemarie van den Breemer, Anne Raustøl, Oddgeir Synnes, Norwegian National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and Humanities (NESH).
- WP3: Using and Developing Creative Methods
Lead: Oddgeir Synnes, Inger Marie Lid, Anna Chalachanová
Aim: To examine the meaning of everyday citizenship for persons in vulnerable situations to persons with disabilities, including persons with dementia, through creative craft workshops and other participatory and creative methods.
Collaborators: Ruth Bartlett, Kirsten J. Fjetland, Anita Gjermestad
- WP3a: The Photo Exhibition "Ulike Hverdagsliv"
Leads: Kirsten J. Fjetland & Anita Gjermestad
Aim: To elucidate everyday life from the perspectives of persons living with intellectual disability and dementia.
Collaborators: Colleagues from the Faculty of Health Science, Sandnes, persons with intellectual disabilities and/or dementia in partnership with Bachelor students in practical education; Bachelor students from the social education and occupational therapy program.
- WP4: Disability Family
Lead: Rosemarie van den Breemer
Aim: To study the everyday life experiences and role of families in the care of citizens born deafblind from a historical and contemporary comparative perspective.
Find out more here.
Collaborators: Inger Marie Lid
- WP5: Universal Design and Cognitive Accessibility
Lead: Ana Koncul
By exploring how the universal design of environments, products, and services can account for the experiences of people who live with dementia and improve cognitive accessibility, this work package brings user participation and lived experience together with the concept of universal design.
Keywords: universal design, user participation, first-person perspective, cognitive accessibility, dementia, intellectual disabilities, cognitive disabilities
Collaborators: Ruth Bartlett, Ingebjørg Haugen
- WP6: Dementia, Everyday Citizenship, and Religio-Culture in Rural Nigeria
Doctoral project: Elizabeth George
Description: This research project aims to locate and uncover citizenship in the everyday, exploring how people with dementia, through mundane and everyday activities, demonstrate agency and participate in their lives and community in rural Nigeria and the religious and cultural influences (if any) to the actualization of this everyday display of citizenship. An ethnographic and inclusive approach will be adopted to explore the perspectives of people showing signs of dementia in the chosen community, their caregivers, and other members of the community, including religious and traditional leaders.
Co-supervisors: Ruth Bartlett, Ana Koncul, Inger Marie Lid
- WP7: Supported Decision Making, Everyday Citizenship, and People with Intellectual Disabilities
Doctoral project: Sadeta Demić
Description: This study aims to get an overview of how supported decision making is practiced in current health and welfare services together with people with intellectual disabilities, as well as to explore service providers and relatives experiences with supported decision making in everyday life for people with intellectual disabilities who live in municipalities and who struggle to express themselves verbally.
Co-supervisor: Inger Marie Lid, Rosemarie van den Bremmer, Halvor Hanisch
The CitPro Events
- International Symposium Everyday Citizenship and Persons with Disabilities: Pasts, Presents, Futures
The CitPro team will host an international symposium ‘Everyday Citizenship and Persons with Disabilities: Pasts, Presents, Futures' on October 4th and 5th 2023 at VID Specialized University, campus Oslo.
Our aim is to bring together knowledge-makers from the fields of disability, dementia, and citizenship studies, to discuss historic and current trends in understandings and applications of everyday citizenship in relation to persons with disabilities, including people with dementia.
More information will be announced soon.
- CitPro celebrates the International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Each year, the CitPro team marks the International Day of People with Disabilities (IDPWD).
The latest IDPWD theme is “Transformative solutions for inclusive development: the role of innovation in fuelling an accessible and equitable world“.
Our team of researchers, educators, people with disabilities, activists, and allies is focused on developing inclusive solutions and we are proud of our efforts to honor the theme. Our pioneering higher education program for persons with intellectual disabilities has successfully taken off with the first generation of students, directly contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the focus of this year's theme regarding the reduction of inequality. Our research projects have focused on the everyday lives of people in vulnerable situations, including persons with dementia in Nigeria, and families of persons who are deaf-blind, as well as supported decision-making, and universal design and welfare technologies. Collectively, the work within CitPro is helping to provide transformative solutions for a more accessible and equitable world.
Learn more about the International Day of People with Disabilities here.
- International Symposium "Creative Methods in Participatory Research: Disability and Citizenship"
27-28 April 2022, VID Specialized University, Oslo
To better pursue participant-centered research in disability studies, a range of creative research methods has been developed. These new methods allow participants to contribute through other means than verbal conversation and address themes that matter to participants in their everyday lives. The two-day symposium organized by CitPro aimed to provide a platform for a constructive discussion of some of these new methods, combining academic presentations with hands-on practical workshops on walking interviews, photography, poetry, or sensory methods.
The symposium opened with a discussion of the state of the art of inclusive research methods in disability studies both in Norway and internationally. The discussion was followed by a presentation of relevant doctoral, postdoctoral, and other projects that employ or develop experimental inclusive methods. The focus was on the benefits and possible research ethical challenges of doing such inclusive research.
Keynote speakers:
Melanie Nind, Professor of Education at the University of Southampton; co-directors of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods;
Ole Petter Askheim, Professor at the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences;
Lars Frers, Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Sports and Educational Science, University of South-Eastern Norway.
- Photo exhibition “Ulike hverdagsliv”
- Author Meets Critic Session with Rosemarie van den BreemerRosemarie van den Breemer, Postdoctoral Fellow at CitPro, has presented her new book on state responses to diversity on June 17th, 2021, 15.30-17.00 (CET).The digital event is part of an international conference organized by The Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (NSRN).The link to the e-book available for free download is here.
CitPro Publications
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Gjermestad, A., Skarsaune, S. N., & Bartlett, R. L. (2023). Advancing inclusive research with people with profound and multiple learning disabilities through a sensory-dialogical approach. Journal of Intellectual Disabilities, 27(1), 40–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/17446295211062390
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Demic, S., Breemer, R., Hanisch, H. & Lid, I. M. (2023). Beslutningsstøtte i kommunale botilbud for personer med utviklingshemming. Forthcoming 2023. Fontene forskning
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Sund M, Hanisch H, Fjetland KJ. 2023. Activistic citizenship in nursing homes: co-ownership in the mundane. Dementia 22 (3): 594-609. doi: 10.1177/14713012231155307. Epub 2023 Jan 30. PMID: 36716355; PMCID: PMC1000932
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Ruth, Bartlett, Koncul, Ana, Lid, Inger Marie, George, Elizabeth, Haugen, Ingebjørg. Forthcoming 2023. Using walking / go-along interviews with people in a vulnerable situation: A synthesized review of the research literature. International Journal of Qualitative Methods. DOI: 10.1177/16094069231164606
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Koncul, Ana, Aubrecht, Katie, Kelly, Christine, Bartlett, Ruth. 2023. Long-term Care Homes: Carceral spaces in times of crisis or perpetually? in Schillmeier, Michael (ed.) Space & Culture Special Issue on Dis-abling Spaces and Cultures in Times of Crisis.
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Koncul, Ana, George, Elizabeth, Bartlett, Ruth. Forthcoming 2023. A Semiotic Analysis of Meanings of Dementia Around the World. in Capstick, Andrea, Fletcher, James. Critical History of Dementia. Routledge.
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Gjermestad, Anita, Synne N Skarsaune, Ruth L Bartlett. 2022. Advancing inclusive research together with people with profound and multiple learning disabilities through a sensory-dialogical approach. Journal of Intellectual Disabilities. https://doi.org/10.1177/17446295211062390
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Fjetland, Kirsten Jæger, Gjermestad, Anita, Lid, Inger Marie. 2022. Lived Citizenship for Persons in Vulnerable Situations: Theories and Practices. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget
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Sund, M., Fjetland, K.J. & Hanisch, H. 2022. Within moments of becoming—everyday citizenship in nursing homes. Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, DOI: 10.1080/11038128.2022.2085621
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Lid, Inger Marie, Wyller, Trygve. 2022. Makt, motmakt og praksis. Bidrag til Kritisk Refleksjon Innen Diakoni og Velferd, Cappelen Damm Akademisk, Open Access
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Breemer, Rosemarie van den. 2022. Epistemisk urettferdighet og motstand i livet til familier med barn med nedsatt funksjonsevne, in Wyller, T. & Lid, I. M (edt) Makt, motmakt og praksis. Bidrag til Kritisk Refleksjon Innen Diakoni og Velferd, Cappelen Damm Akademisk, Open Access
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Lid, Inger Marie. 2021. Integrating Participatory Approaches in Research: Power, Dilemmas, and Potentials. Diaconia 12 (1): 41-60 https://doi.org/10.13109/diac.2021.12.1.41
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Lea, E. & Synnes, O. (2021). ‘I still want to be part of the world... where I belong’: A case study of the experiences of a man with Alzheimer’s of dementia-friendly guided tours at an art museum. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, 15(1), 163-191. https://doi.org/10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3282
The CitPro Reading Group
The CitPro team runs a regular reading group to examine and discuss important texts relevant to everyday citizenship in vulnerable situations. The reading group takes place physically (usually at VID, Oslo campus) and is open to all VID students and staff, and anyone with an interest in everyday citizenship. For more details, contact ana.koncul@vid.no