Care Love and Solidarity

Join us for a two-day research conference bringing together researchers, practitioners, advocates and community members to explore disability, law and society through the themes of care, love and solidarity.

Featured contributors:
Keynote speaker: Rosemary Kayess, Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Australian Human Rights Commission
Plenary speaker: William-Ward Boas , Chair of Victorian Advocacy League for Individuals with Disability (VALID)

Details

• Format: In-person at La Trobe University's City Campus in Melbourne, with online participation available via Zoom
• Location: Level 3, 360 Collins Street, Melbourne, 3000
• Cost:
  • Standard registration: $300
  • Reduced registration: $75
  • Fee waiver: Free registration is available for participants for whom the standard fee would present a barrier to participation, including HDR candidates, unwaged participants, advocates and community organisation representatives. The conference aims to ensure that financial circumstances do not prevent participation.

About the conference

The 2026 Research Conference of the Disability, Law and Society Network of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand explores the relationships between disability, law, society, culture and politics.

Disability law is understood broadly, encompassing laws specifically concerning disability as well as other areas of law, policy and legal practice that affect people with disability.

The conference aims to strengthen connections between academic research, lived experience, affected communities and legal practice, and to increase attention to disability and the legal issues affecting disabled people within law and legal scholarship.

The program will include keynote and plenary presentations, research presentations, panels and opportunities for discussion and exchange. A separate workshop for Higher Degree Research and Early Career Researchers will also be held in association with the conference.

The conference will be delivered in a hybrid format, with opportunities to participate online.

Submit your abstract

We welcome abstracts that critically engage with disability, law and society in relation to the conference theme, ‘Care, Love, and Solidarity’.

We particularly encourage interdisciplinary proposals that explore the intersections of disability research, law, advocacy, culture and politics, and that centre the voices, expertise and lived experiences of people with disability.

View the Call for Papers [DOCX 485.2 KB]

• Abstract length: Up to 300 words
• Submission deadline: 1 October 2026
• Notification of acceptance: Applicants will be notified as soon as possible after the submission deadline.

Submit your abstract

You may also scan this QR code to submit your abstract:

Conference theme: Care, Love  and Solidarity

The conference theme invites participants to consider:

• the role of care in disability law and policy, and the possibilities and limits of care as a legal and political concept
• what love might mean for law and justice
• what solidarity requires of researchers, practitioners and institutions; and
• how disability law and society research might itself operate as a practice of care, love and solidarity.

Organising committee

The conference is organised by:

• Piers Gooding and Chris Maylea – La Trobe University
• Linda Steele – University of Technology Sydney; and
• Anna Arstein-Kerslake – University of Melbourne.

Hosted by: La Trobe University's Mental Health and Disability Law Research Centre.

The Centre brings together researchers, people with lived experience, practitioners and partner organisations to advance research, law reform and practice in disability and mental health law.

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