周月清Yueh-Ching Chou

做學術、做倡議：讓國際學術社群看見臺灣障礙者的經驗知識

I identify myself not only as a researcher but also a practitioner and an activist advocating disabled people's opportunities to live independently in the community.

Before I completed my Ph.D. program at the University of Minnesota, I had been a social worker in Taipei City and a care worker at an institution for people with intellectual disability (ID) and at a nursing home for frail older people in Taiwan. My doctoral thesis focused on an intervention developed for families who had a child with ID. Intervention development and program evaluation has since become my research expertise.

My research work has been linked with my involvement in the disability movement and in close cooperation with organisations of disabled people. I also employ inclusive and emancipatory research paradigm in which disabled people are in an influential position. My research has extended, for example, to sexual health and sexual rights of women/people with ID and to reconciliation between paid work and unpaid caring among mothers of children with ID. My recent research focuses on disabled and older people's independent living, older parental/maternal carers of ageing offspring with ID and life stories of people with ID.

As a first author, I have published around 50 articles in international journals (e.g., SSM, AJIDD, JSR, D&S, RIDD, JIDR, JARID, IJSW, ES, A&S, EJA) and a number of chapters in international anthologies.