Duration: 01/09/2026 – 31/08/2027
Code: CIGE/2026/033
Funded by: Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Universitats (Generalitat Valenciana)
Webpage: TBA
Principal Investigator: Virginia Ballesteros (University of Valencia)
Research Team: Carlota Serrahima (University of Valencia), J. P. Grodniewicz (Jagiellonian University), Amalia Haro-Marchal (NOVA University Lisbon), Alba Moreno-Zurita (University of Santiago de Compostela), Miguel Núñez de Prado-Gordillo (University of Granada) and Jodie Russell (University of Birmingham).
SUMARY
In recent decades, civil rights movements such as Mad Pride, Psychiatric Survivors, and the Neurodiversity Movement have denounced the unjust treatment of psychiatrized, “mad”, and neurodivergent individuals by psychiatric institutions, demanding a paradigm shift. For instance, the Neurodiversity Movement challenges the default pathologization of conditions like autism, ADHD, or schizophrenia, arguing that these represent natural forms of human variation and demanding that neurodivergent perspectives be included in research and clinical decision-making. Distinguishing itself from traditional anti-psychiatry, it acknowledges the genuine suffering and disability often associated with these traits while primarily targeting the ableist social and material structures that hinder flourishing. Similarly, Mad Pride reclaims madness as a positive basis for personal identity, defending experiences like voice-hearing or heightened sensitivity as valuable phenomena rather than mere dysfunctions.
These claims acquire significant philosophical relevance when framed within contemporary discussions on epistemic, discursive, and hermeneutical injustice. Biases, power relations, and institutional practices systematically undermine the credibility of oppressed groups, silencing neurodivergent and psychiatrized voices. Crucially, what is at stake is the very capacity of these individuals to articulate and make sense of their first-person experiences in their own terms, rather than having them mediated solely through psychiatric concepts.
The objective of this project is to conceptually articulate the tools of self-understanding developed from mad and neurodivergent identities, and to advance them as modes of resistance against hermeneutical injustice. This entails (1) elucidating central concepts within these movements, such as mind, cognitive divergence, and mental capacity; and (2) evaluating and justifying their epistemic and practical roles in resisting hermeneutical injustices and challenging dominant biases.