We are accepting abstract submissions now!

If you wish to submit an individual presentation, please click the "Individual Submission Form" button below. We will add you to an existing session on a related topic. Abstracts must be between 150-200 words. The presentation should last 20 minutes. The Peer Review team will notify you when your submission has been accepted.  

Note: If you are already part of a Session, you do not need to fill out this form. Please send your abstract to your Session Organizer who will submit on your behalf. 

If you wish to organize a session, please click the "Session Submission Form" button below. As the Session Organizer, you are responsible for submitting the information and abstracts of all presenters in your session on this form. Each Session contains 4 to 5 presentations, which will each last 20 minutes. 

As in the tradition of the IALMH, there exists a Therapeutic Jurisprudence Stream. If you wish to submit an individual presentation or a session in this stream, please fill out the “TJ Individual Submission Form” or the “TJ Session Submission Form” respectively. Please contact Professor Yamada (dyamada@suffolk.edu) or Professor Kierstead (skierstead@osgoode.yorku.ca) with questions related to this stream. 

Linda Steele is the Organizer of the Disability, Law and Society Stream. Please submit your abstract or session via the submission forms and select the ‘Disability, Law and Society' Stream. Please direct technical questions to IALMH and any thematic questions about the stream to linda.steele@uts.edu.au

‘Disability, Law and Society’

Convened by Beverley Clough, Isabel Karpin, Roxanne Mykitiuk, Tess Sheldon, Linda Steele, and Sheila Wildeman

The ‘Disability, Law and Society’ stream embraces socio-legal and critical legal scholarship, and builds on similar streams at the 2019, 2022 and 2024 Congresses. We aim to bring together papers that problematise and critique the existing doctrine and categories of disability and mental health law. We are particularly interested in including interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary papers that engage with the humanities, the arts, and social sciences.  Work that examines the intersections of disability and mental health law with the knowledges and experiences of disabled and mad people and with politics, culture, history and society is also welcome. Papers centring intersectionality and engaging with lived experiences and perspectives of mad and disabled people and their advocacy organisations are welcome, as are papers presenting empirical research that utilise inclusive, collaborative and accessible research methods. We are also interested in papers that develop new critical perspectives on the more traditional ‘core’ concerns of disability and mental health law (e.g. definitions, coercive interventions, legal capacity, CRPD, consent, deprivation of liberty, equality and disability discrimination). These engagements should bring new questions or issues to the conversation, or connect these concerns to broader political dynamics.

Following the ‘Disability, Law and Society’ stream dinners organised for earlier Congresses, we have decided to organise another at the 2026 Congress. The dinner will be self-funded and will provide an opportunity to consolidate our international community of socio-legal disability scholars, and discuss possible research collaborations and ongoing research networks.

We will also organise a series of online sessions in the months leading up to the Congress, to support the development of connections and networks prior to us meeting in Quebec.

We encourage people with lived experience, anti-oppression activists, those who work for disability rights NGOs and PhD students to consider submitting an abstract.