Dr Alison Dougal is an academic consultant at Dublin Dental University Dental Hospital and is a Special Care Dentist with responsibility for medically complex patients and people with disabilities. She teaches Clinical Special Care Dentistry and sedation at undergraduate, postgraduate and doctorate level and has Clinical Consultant Posts at St James and St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin. Current she's the President of the International Association for Disability and Oral Health. She is also on the Medical Advisory Board for World Federation of Haemophilia, is past president of the Irish Society for Disability and Oral Health and is on the Irish academic reference panel working with the DOH on the new oral health policy.

She is an international speaker of repute having delivered keynote lectures in Europe, USA, Australia, South America and beyond. she has published many scientific articles and a clinical textbook of special care dentistry. She has extensive healthcare management experience and was Clinical Director of Salaried Services in Warwickshire, UK.

Dr Sasha Scambler is Reader in Sociology at King’s College London. She has a special interest in health, focusing on long term conditions, disability, inequality in all its various forms and social theory. She is an editor of the journal Sociology of Health and Illness and a contributing editor of the British Sociological Association (BSA) affiliated ‘cost of living blog’. She has recently completed her term as co-convenor of the BSA Medical Sociology Group.

Sasha's session 'From Victims to Heroes to Scroungers: Changes in the public perception of disabled people' stresses that Language matters. Language reflects underlying definitions and mindsets and shapes treatment.   There is no universal understanding of the concept of ‘disability’.  The nature, meaning and impact of disability depend on the geographical, historical, social, cultural and economic environments in which the person with the disability is located.  This is reflected in the treatment of disabled people over time.  Recognition of the changing nature of disability is essential to developing an understanding of disability today.  This is particularly relevant when looking at changes in popular views of disability and disabled people.  Taking the UK as a case study this talk looks at representations of disabled people over the past 50 years, focusing on the language used and the implications of this for the treatment of disabled people.  This talk tracks the move from shame to pity, from community living to Paralympic heroes, and from scroungers and benefit cheats to the rhetoric of disability as an afterthought (at best) through the Covid pandemic.