We are delighted to celebrate Jodi Lo, a member of the Centre for Child and Family Justice Research, who has been awarded a highly competitive NWSSDTP ESRC Standard Studentship to undertake her PhD in the School of Social Sciences at Lancaster University, beginning in October 2026.

Jodi’s research will explore the lived experiences of hate crime against people with learning disabilities, asking an important question: what happens when people who experience hate crime are not recognised as credible knowers of their own lives?

Drawing on the concept of epistemic injustice, the project will examine how the experiences of people with learning disabilities can be devalued, disbelieved or silenced. Hate crime may be reframed as simply part of being “vulnerable”, treated as an unfortunate but normal feature of everyday life, or overlooked within institutions shaped by ableist assumptions. These processes matter because they can contribute to hate crime being both under-reported and under-recognised.

The project will also look beyond individual encounters to the wider systems through which knowledge becomes recognised as legitimate. Bringing epistemic injustice into conversation with the sociology of knowledge, Jodi will examine how institutional practices, power relations and historical processes shape whose accounts are heard, whose knowledge carries authority, and whose experiences remain hidden.

At the heart of the research will be the voices of people with learning disabilities themselves. Through longitudinal qualitative interviews, Jodi will explore how people experience, interpret and navigate hate crime over time, recognising participants not simply as subjects of research, but as experts in their own lived experience.

The PhD is being developed in collaboration with L’Arche UK, a national charity working alongside people with learning disabilities. This partnership will support a research approach that is both academically rigorous and grounded in community knowledge and practice.

Jodi will be supervised by Dr Thaddeus Müller, Dr Joanna Kostka and Dr Peter Oakes, who joins the supervisory team as the non-HEI partner supervisor.

We are thrilled to see Jodi embark on this important project and very proud to have her as part of the CfJ community.

Congratulations, Jodi, on securing the studentship and on the start of what promises to be an important and timely piece of research.