We warmly welcome Daniel P. Jones to the Platform, who joins us as a 2025-26 Bridging Fellow in the Moving Bodies Lab and the Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences. Daniel (he/him) is a crip-queer disability scholar and creative practitioner working in interdisciplinary and cross-medium ways, bringing together human geography, medical humanities, and critical disability/neurodiversity studies. His Fellowship will focus on the embodied experiences of Tourette Syndrome and the development of novel creative, inclusive research methodologies.
1. If your research was a film, what would the title be?
If my research were a film, it would be called Impulse. Much of my work engages with the idea of impulsivity. This impulsivity can be seen in relation to tics and notions of ‘loss of control,’ my interest in subconscious thought and action, or even in the way my interdisciplinary approach often leads me to follow unexpected paths. While impulse is often seen in a negative light, I see it as central to the way I think, create, and research, as well as to the way that humans experience space and place. ‘Impulse’ feels like a nice summarising word that has enough scope to go off in many (impulsive) directions – it’s a great starting point that can be open to interpretation.
2. What will you be doing during your Bridging Fellowship?
During the Bridging Fellowship, I will be developing further grant applications for a project I have titled Touretic Studies. This development work involves both publishing from my PhD research on the ‘Geographies of Impulse’ and conducting new scoping research on Tourettic experiences and cultures, with a focus on three key themes:
- Multiply marginalised experiences of Tourette Syndrome
- The technologisation of Tourette Syndrome and Tourettic cultures
- Impulse and movement as method
As a part of this, I will undertake autoethnographic movement practice that begins with my own Tourettic tics as a basis for choreography. This serves as exploratory research into the value of a critical neurodiversity studies approach where I will be considering tics not only as an object of study but also as a generative starting point. Through this, I aim to consider how Tourettic experiences might be translated into movement-based performance.
3. What expertise and experiences will you be drawing on during the fellowship?
- Lived experience
- Interdisciplinarity
- Creative practitioner work
- Activist and community facilitation roots
4. Why are you excited about working in The Platform?
The Platform is a leading space for critical medical humanities, bringing together an interdisciplinary and methodologically experimental community of researchers and creative practitioners. Being part of this community will allow me to further develop my own research practice as an emerging scholar. I am especially excited to collaborate with colleagues in the Moving Bodies Lab, including Cassie Phoenix and Emily Davis, while also continuing to shape the emerging field of critical neurodiversity studies with IMH colleague Louise Creechan. The opportunity to learn from, and be surrounded by, the field-defining work of colleagues within The Platform was a major draw of this role for me.
5. What changes would you like to see as a result of your research?
- Methodological
- Reducing the clinical-medical-social science-lived experience divides, and a shift beyond the syndrome in Tourette Syndrome research, making space for the consideration of the Tourettic (culture, politics, aesthetic).
6. What interests or hobbies do you have outside your research that might surprise people?
I enjoy stand up (or sit down) paddle boarding, and have a love for storytelling and experiencing narrative through videogames. I am also a big tattoo fan, and you can often find me sketching up ideas for the next one!
