Simo Vehma
Biographic Data
| ID | 2123800 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Simo Vehma |
| GIVEN NAMES | Simo |
| FAMILY NAME | Vehma |
| SIGNATURE | VEHMA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5368-6753 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 93 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Nordic Network on Disability Research
This article commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Nordic Network on Disability Research (NNDR) in 2027 by examining its historical development, intellectual foundations and contemporary significance. Drawing on reflections from former and current presidents, it traces NNDR’s origins in the early 1990s and its transformation from a network centred on intellectual disability to a multidisciplinary and internationally engaged platform for disabi…
MultiSensory Music Drama with a student with severe/profound intellectual and multiple disabilities
The feasibility of a pedagogical approach—MultiSensory Music Drama (MSMD)—was investigated in collaboration with a teacher and a student with severe/profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (S/PIMD). Educational research for this group of learners is scarce, but research has suggested the potential of integrating music and multisensory storytelling to promote interactive engagement. A case study using co‐production between a teacher and re…
Narrowed Lives
Appendix
Persons with profound intellectual disability and their right to sex
This article discusses sexuality and sexual rights of persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. I will address the issue by reflecting on my own previous negligence about the issue, and unpack the ethics of sexuality of persons with profound intellectual disability in the light of ethnographic observation and interview data. I will discuss the significance of cognitive and communicative capacities as regards sexual rights as w…
Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies
This fully revised and expanded second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies takes a multidisciplinary approach to disability and provides an authoritative and up-to-date overview of the main issues in the field around the world today. Adopting an international perspective and arranged thematically, it surveys the state of the discipline, examining emerging and cutting-edge areas as well as core areas of contention.\nDivided in …
Voiceless subjects? Research ethics and persons with profound intellectual disabilities
This paper discusses possibilities of designing ethical research practice in relation to people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). We will argue that in the case of this group of people, research ethics is about ethically justifiable research aims, design, methods, and practices that are based on the recognition of their equal worth as humans. We argue that the turn to emancipatory methods in disability studies has effec…
Exploring normativity in disability studies
Normativity is a concept that is often misapplied in disability studies, especially in ‘postconventional’ accounts, where the concept is conflated with ‘normal’, ‘normate’, or ‘standard’. This article addresses this confusion, explores the meaning and use of ‘normativity’, and presents some analytic tools to discuss normative issues of right and wrong. The article finishes by discussing examples where conceptual confusions result in confused norm…
The teacher almost made me cry’ Narrative analysis of teachers' reactive classroom management strategies as reported by students diagnosed with ADHD
Self-pathologizing, self-condemning, self-liberating
Disability as a test of justice in a globalising world
This paper shows how most modern theories of justice could require or at least condone international aid aimed at alleviating the ill effects of disability. Seen from the general viewpoint of liberal egalitarianism, this is moderately encouraging, since according to the creed people in bad positions should be aided, and disability tends to put people in such positions. The actual responses of many theories, including John Rawls's famous view of j…
In the shadow of disability
Writing about disability history has many potential pitfalls. Roughly, you can either be empirically meticulous and boring, or you can be theoretically and analytically broad-minded, and thus excit
Moral wrongs, disadvantages, and disability
Critical disability studies (CDS) has emerged as an approach to the study of disability over the last decade or so and has sought to present a challenge to the predominantly materialist line found in the more conventional disability studies approaches. In much the same way that the original development of the social model resulted in a necessary correction to the overly individualized accounts of disability that prevailed in much of the interpret…
Parental and professional agency in terminations for fetal anomalies
This study explores the construction of parental and professional agency in the written accounts by women who have undergone selective abortion (N=8). The analysis of the data was based on qualitative, linguistic discourse analysis. The accounts indicate that the mothers themselves exhibited both strong and weak agency during the process of prenatal diagnosis. The role of the professionals was usually discussed in these accounts concerning only t…
Staring
Staring: how we look, by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, New York, Oxford University Press, 2009, 244 pp., US$24.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-195-32680-2 I have always been a starer. People have reminded
Special needs
This paper attempts to illuminate a central concept and idea in special education discourse, namely, ‘special needs’. It analyses philosophically what needs are and on what grounds they are defined as ‘special’ or ‘exceptional’. It also discusses whether sorting needs into ordinary and special is discriminatory. It is argued that individualistic tendency in special need rhetoric has serious shortcomings, although it does not inevitably lead to di…
Arguing about Disability
Introduction: The Unavoidable Alliance of Disability Studies and Philosophy - Simo Vehmas, Kristjana Kristiansen and Tom Shakespeare Part 1: Metaphysics 1. Social Justice and Disability: Competing Interpretations of the Medical and Social Models - Steven R. Smith 2. Definitions of Disability: Ethical and Other Values - Steven D. Edwards 3. The Ontology of Disability and Impairment: A Discussion of the Natural and Social Features - Simo Vehmas and…
Discriminative Assumptions of Utilitarian Bioethics Regarding Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities
Bioutilitarianism', which is a position presented by the well-known utilitarian philosophers Helga Kuhse, James Rachels and Peter Singer, views the potential existence of infants with intellectual disabilities as less valuable than the existence of 'normal' infants. I will argue that their arguments are based on misleading and biased information about the characteristics of individuals with intellectual disabilities and their quality of life. By …
Moral wrongs, disadvantages, and disability
Critical disability studies (CDS) has emerged as an approach to the study of disability over the last decade or so and has sought to present a challenge to the predominantly materialist line found in the more conventional disability studies approaches. In much the same way that the original development of the social model resulted in a necessary correction to the overly individualized accounts of disability that prevailed in much of the interpret…
Exploring normativity in disability studies
Normativity is a concept that is often misapplied in disability studies, especially in ‘postconventional’ accounts, where the concept is conflated with ‘normal’, ‘normate’, or ‘standard’. This article addresses this confusion, explores the meaning and use of ‘normativity’, and presents some analytic tools to discuss normative issues of right and wrong. The article finishes by discussing examples where conceptual confusions result in confused norm…
Voiceless subjects? Research ethics and persons with profound intellectual disabilities
This paper discusses possibilities of designing ethical research practice in relation to people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). We will argue that in the case of this group of people, research ethics is about ethically justifiable research aims, design, methods, and practices that are based on the recognition of their equal worth as humans. We argue that the turn to emancipatory methods in disability studies has effec…
The teacher almost made me cry’ Narrative analysis of teachers' reactive classroom management strategies as reported by students diagnosed with ADHD
Self-pathologizing, self-condemning, self-liberating
Persons with profound intellectual disability and their right to sex
This article discusses sexuality and sexual rights of persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. I will address the issue by reflecting on my own previous negligence about the issue, and unpack the ethics of sexuality of persons with profound intellectual disability in the light of ethnographic observation and interview data. I will discuss the significance of cognitive and communicative capacities as regards sexual rights as w…
Discriminative Assumptions of Utilitarian Bioethics Regarding Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities
Bioutilitarianism', which is a position presented by the well-known utilitarian philosophers Helga Kuhse, James Rachels and Peter Singer, views the potential existence of infants with intellectual disabilities as less valuable than the existence of 'normal' infants. I will argue that their arguments are based on misleading and biased information about the characteristics of individuals with intellectual disabilities and their quality of life. By …
Special needs
This paper attempts to illuminate a central concept and idea in special education discourse, namely, ‘special needs’. It analyses philosophically what needs are and on what grounds they are defined as ‘special’ or ‘exceptional’. It also discusses whether sorting needs into ordinary and special is discriminatory. It is argued that individualistic tendency in special need rhetoric has serious shortcomings, although it does not inevitably lead to di…
Parental and professional agency in terminations for fetal anomalies
This study explores the construction of parental and professional agency in the written accounts by women who have undergone selective abortion (N=8). The analysis of the data was based on qualitative, linguistic discourse analysis. The accounts indicate that the mothers themselves exhibited both strong and weak agency during the process of prenatal diagnosis. The role of the professionals was usually discussed in these accounts concerning only t…
Discriminative Assumptions of Utilitarian Bioethics Regarding Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities
Bioutilitarianism', which is a position presented by the well-known utilitarian philosophers Helga Kuhse, James Rachels and Peter Singer, views the potential existence of infants with intellectual disabilities as less valuable than the existence of 'normal' infants. I will argue that their arguments are based on misleading and biased information about the characteristics of individuals with intellectual disabilities and their quality of life. By …
Arguing about Disability
Introduction: The Unavoidable Alliance of Disability Studies and Philosophy - Simo Vehmas, Kristjana Kristiansen and Tom Shakespeare Part 1: Metaphysics 1. Social Justice and Disability: Competing Interpretations of the Medical and Social Models - Steven R. Smith 2. Definitions of Disability: Ethical and Other Values - Steven D. Edwards 3. The Ontology of Disability and Impairment: A Discussion of the Natural and Social Features - Simo Vehmas and…
Special needs
This paper attempts to illuminate a central concept and idea in special education discourse, namely, ‘special needs’. It analyses philosophically what needs are and on what grounds they are defined as ‘special’ or ‘exceptional’. It also discusses whether sorting needs into ordinary and special is discriminatory. It is argued that individualistic tendency in special need rhetoric has serious shortcomings, although it does not inevitably lead to di…
Staring
Staring: how we look, by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, New York, Oxford University Press, 2009, 244 pp., US$24.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-195-32680-2 I have always been a starer. People have reminded
Parental and professional agency in terminations for fetal anomalies
This study explores the construction of parental and professional agency in the written accounts by women who have undergone selective abortion (N=8). The analysis of the data was based on qualitative, linguistic discourse analysis. The accounts indicate that the mothers themselves exhibited both strong and weak agency during the process of prenatal diagnosis. The role of the professionals was usually discussed in these accounts concerning only t…
Moral wrongs, disadvantages, and disability
Critical disability studies (CDS) has emerged as an approach to the study of disability over the last decade or so and has sought to present a challenge to the predominantly materialist line found in the more conventional disability studies approaches. In much the same way that the original development of the social model resulted in a necessary correction to the overly individualized accounts of disability that prevailed in much of the interpret…
In the shadow of disability
Writing about disability history has many potential pitfalls. Roughly, you can either be empirically meticulous and boring, or you can be theoretically and analytically broad-minded, and thus excit
Disability as a test of justice in a globalising world
This paper shows how most modern theories of justice could require or at least condone international aid aimed at alleviating the ill effects of disability. Seen from the general viewpoint of liberal egalitarianism, this is moderately encouraging, since according to the creed people in bad positions should be aided, and disability tends to put people in such positions. The actual responses of many theories, including John Rawls's famous view of j…
Exploring normativity in disability studies
Normativity is a concept that is often misapplied in disability studies, especially in ‘postconventional’ accounts, where the concept is conflated with ‘normal’, ‘normate’, or ‘standard’. This article addresses this confusion, explores the meaning and use of ‘normativity’, and presents some analytic tools to discuss normative issues of right and wrong. The article finishes by discussing examples where conceptual confusions result in confused norm…
The teacher almost made me cry’ Narrative analysis of teachers' reactive classroom management strategies as reported by students diagnosed with ADHD
Self-pathologizing, self-condemning, self-liberating
Voiceless subjects? Research ethics and persons with profound intellectual disabilities
This paper discusses possibilities of designing ethical research practice in relation to people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). We will argue that in the case of this group of people, research ethics is about ethically justifiable research aims, design, methods, and practices that are based on the recognition of their equal worth as humans. We argue that the turn to emancipatory methods in disability studies has effec…
Persons with profound intellectual disability and their right to sex
This article discusses sexuality and sexual rights of persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. I will address the issue by reflecting on my own previous negligence about the issue, and unpack the ethics of sexuality of persons with profound intellectual disability in the light of ethnographic observation and interview data. I will discuss the significance of cognitive and communicative capacities as regards sexual rights as w…
Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies
This fully revised and expanded second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies takes a multidisciplinary approach to disability and provides an authoritative and up-to-date overview of the main issues in the field around the world today. Adopting an international perspective and arranged thematically, it surveys the state of the discipline, examining emerging and cutting-edge areas as well as core areas of contention.\nDivided in …
Narrowed Lives
Appendix
MultiSensory Music Drama with a student with severe/profound intellectual and multiple disabilities
The feasibility of a pedagogical approach—MultiSensory Music Drama (MSMD)—was investigated in collaboration with a teacher and a student with severe/profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (S/PIMD). Educational research for this group of learners is scarce, but research has suggested the potential of integrating music and multisensory storytelling to promote interactive engagement. A case study using co‐production between a teacher and re…
Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Nordic Network on Disability Research
This article commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Nordic Network on Disability Research (NNDR) in 2027 by examining its historical development, intellectual foundations and contemporary significance. Drawing on reflections from former and current presidents, it traces NNDR’s origins in the early 1990s and its transformation from a network centred on intellectual disability to a multidisciplinary and internationally engaged platform for disabi…
Psychology (15 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Disability Rights and Representation (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Intellectual disability (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Law (6 works)