Greta Carlevaro is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University. Her research investigates how temporal, material, embodied, and affective practices of resistance among people aging with disabilities emerge through media representation, production, and interpretation. She is currently collecting and analysing counter hegemonic media discourses and practices in order to identify and interrogate dominant neoliberal narratives of linear, age-based and disability-free life trajectories. This project begins from the premise that aging and disability are not sequential or oppositional conditions but interwoven socio-cultural constructs. Their intersection is marked by a central paradox: while a longer life span is generally considered desirable, it also increases the likelihood of experiencing disability as an ordinary aspect of human existence. Disability itself, however, remains culturally constructed as abnormal, unhealthy, and unexpected. In this regard, media become spaces in which resistance to ableist and ageist discourses takes shape. This research is supervised by Prof. dr.Aagje Swinnen and dr. Sara de Vuyst. Read more here.
