Jasu da Silva Gonçalves, MSc (Econ) & MA (Education), is a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Educational Sciences. Previously they have done an ethnographic study on the study practices of university students and a discursive analysis examining the constitution of the student subject in writings about mental health from the perspective of power and subjectification. Their current research relates to university students' mental health and ableism in the academia, and examines how ableist ideals are produced in both the discourses of student mental health services and the practices of the university and how the students see themselves in light of these ideals. They are interested in the mechanisms of injustice and exclusion in the university context, as well as in (post)qualitative research and methodological approaches combining autoethnography, drifting, nomadic research and collective memory work. Their perspective is informed, among others, by poststructural feminist research, disability studies, crip theory, and mad studies.
Their own experiences of discomfort and of not quite fitting in have led them to ask questions about who the university is for. Through their studies, they have come to understand that those feelings of inadequacy are not merely their own, but a part of economic, cultural and social forces that shape what we come to think of as ideal and abject.