Miss Lilly Buonasorte
Expertise
My PhD research explores how disabled people navigate benefits in the UK (such as Personal Independence Payment). I am particularly interested in rumours, preparatory practices and (mis)trust between individuals and the state.
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Research interests
My research interests include (dis)ability, UK social welfare systems (benefits), austerity, relational practices, corporeality and identity-making.
My PhD research explores how UK social welfare systems, such as Personal Independence Payment (PIP), are transforming disabled lifeworlds. In order to better understand how disability becomes enacted, shaped and experienced through institutionalised social welfare, I am employing a process-and practice-oriented methodology - namely praxiography. Across multiple fields, I will disentangle the role of different actors (e.g. claimants, advocates, assessors, medical and legal bodies), materials (e.g. assessment forms, medical evidence and equipment), and systems (e.g. biomedical models and lived experiences of disability). Synchronously, I am investigating how this assemblage may be further complexified by claimants’ own intersectional characteristics (e.g. ethnicity, gender, age and disability type), local environments, and individual biographies.