{"id":3189,"date":"2019-12-02T09:33:16","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T09:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/?p=3189"},"modified":"2019-12-02T09:33:16","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T09:33:16","slug":"inspirational-diversity-champion-of-the-month-december-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/2019\/12\/02\/inspirational-diversity-champion-of-the-month-december-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month &#8211; December 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"645\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/12\/Mike-1024x645.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3190\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/12\/Mike-1024x645.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/12\/Mike-300x189.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/12\/Mike-768x484.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/12\/Mike.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>3\nDecember is International Day of Persons with Disabilities and with this in mind\nwe have chosen Mike Oliver as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.\nSadly Mike died in March following a short illness and this is the first time\nwe have had a posthumous Champion.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mike\nwas a Professor Emeritus of Disability Studies at the <strong>University of\nGreenwich<\/strong> who spoke, wrote and published books including Understanding\nDisability, The Politics of Disablement and The New Politics of Disablement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He\nwas the first Professor of Disability Studies and was best known as the person\nwho named and popularised the concept of the \u2018social model\u2019 of disability which\nstates that it is the way society is organised which is disabling, not a\nperson\u2019s impairments or medical diagnosis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In\nhis work he comprehensively explained that society is the disability not the\nindividual and goes on to demonstrate that by changing society by removing\ndisabling barriers, disability could be minimised to the point of eradication.\nAs Mike once described it, this different approach to disability: \u201cchanged it\nfrom being a medical issue to being a human rights issue.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Countless\nchange-makers who have shaped the legislation, policies, and world which exists\ntoday credit him and the social model as being their \u2018lightbulb moment\u2019. The\ninitial concept was not his own creation: the principles were laid out in a\n1976 pamphlet produced by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Discrimination.\nHowever, Mike developed the term and popularised it with his 1983 book Social\nWork With Disabled People. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nbook was originally written as course materials for healthcare professionals\nMike was training, but it came out at a fortuitous time for the growing\ndisability rights movement. The social model gave campaigners the framework to\naddress disability discrimination, and the concept became a tool to address\nunderlying assumptions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mike\nis remembered as the father of the social model, the person who founded disability\nstudies as an academic discipline, and the man who ignited a movement and\nchanged the lives of millions of disabled people around the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"\"><tbody><tr><td>\n  &nbsp;\n  To find out\n  more about International Day of Persons with Disabilities see here\n  &nbsp;\n  <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/en\/observances\/day-of-persons-with-disabilities\">https:\/\/www.un.org\/en\/observances\/day-of-persons-with-disabilities<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>3 December is International Day of Persons with Disabilities and with this in mind we have chosen Mike Oliver as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month. Sadly Mike died in March following a short &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disability","category-inspirational-diversity-champion-of-the-month"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}