Staff Profiles

Karen joined the Centre for Human Rights Education February 2010 and has recently been awarded a Curtin Research Fellowship until January 2017. Her main area of interest is in the field of disability, particularly in understanding the central role of public policy for people with disabilities participation, inclusion and representation.  Karen has extensive work experience in the disability rights area, both nationally and internationally.  Areas include national disability policy, international welfare reform, employment and the labour market, advocacy and activism , and Southern theories of transnational justice.

In 2011 Karen was a British Academy International Visiting Fellowship and travelled to Lancaster University to work with Prof Carol Thomas, Dr Chris Grover, Dr Hannah Morgan and Dr Donna Reeve conducting research on the impact of the Cameron's Government welfare reforms on rural disabled women from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Karen is a founding member of the Western Australian Disability Collective, a small civil society group, critically engaging in public policy debates on key issues of concern for the disability movement such as access to health, employment equity and opportunity, and participatory citizenship.

Karen, in partnership with Helen Meekosha, UNSW, founded the Critical Disability Studies Group under the auspice of the Australian Sociological Association.

 Editorial Boards: Disability & Society, Review of Disability Studies

Disability in the Global South: Beyond Northern Epistemologies (2010 – continuing)
Karen Soldatic 

In collaboration with a range of disabiltiy scholars, Karen has been working on a number of projects exploring Southern epistemological and ontological understandings of impairment, disability and transnational justice.

Third World Quarterly: In collaboration with Helen Meekosha, UNSW, Karen edited a special issue of TWQ on disability and Southern espitemologies, the leading journal of policy and scholarship in the field of international studies, setting the agenda on developments discourses of the global debate.

Future work in the area is currently under development.

Disability in Rural Australia (ARC Research Grant 2011 – 2013)
Karen Soldatic (Research Partners: Professor Barbara Pini, Curtin University; Associate Professor Helen Meekosha, University of New South Wales; Professor Carol Thomas, Lancaster University, UK.)

In rural Australia 21.2 per cent of the population has a disability while in remote areas the number is 22.1 per cent yet rural disabled people are rarely heard in policy debates. This study, mapping the experiences of disabled people in non-metropolitan Australia is consequently of critical importance to government and disability advocacy groups.

Disability, Rights, Welfare: Tensions, Contradictions and New Possibilities (2010 – 2013)
Karen Soldatic

Commissioned book through Policy Press, University of Bristol, UK, exploring the emergence of human rights as a dominant disability discourse at a time of neoliberal welfare state retrenchment. 

Human Rights Issues

Disability Rights

Women's Rights

Activism, Advocacy and Change

Community Education and Consciousness Raising

The Ausralian Sociological Association

Australian-Asia-Pacific-Institute

Ethnic Disability Advocacy Centre

2012-2017: Early Career Research Award, Curtin University

2011 - 2012: British Academy International Visiting Fellowship

2011: Early Career Research Award, Humanities, Curtin University

2008: Australian Sociological Association Post-Graduate Conference Award

2005 - 2008:  Fogarty Foundation Three-Year Scholarship Foundation

Refereed Articles (Scholarly Journals)

• Soldatic, K. 2012. Appointment Time: Disability and Neoliberal Workfare Temporalities. Critical Sociology 1: 1-15.
• Meekosha , H, and Soldatic, K. 2011. Human Rights and the Global South: The case of disability. Third World Quarterly 32(8): 1383-1398.
• Soldatic, K, and Chapman, A. 2010. Surviving the Assault? The Australian Disability Movement and the Neoliberal Workfare State. Social Movement Studies 9(2): 139-154.
• Pini, B, and Soldatic, K. 2009. The three Ds of welfare reform: disability, disgust and deservingness. Australian Journal of Human Rights 15(1): 77-95.
• Soldatic, K, and Fiske, L. 2009. Bodies Locked Up: Intesections of Disability and Race in Australian Immigration. Disability and Society 24: 290-301.