Yan Grenier, Université Laval and Visiting fellow at New York University

My doctoral work focuses on the mobility experiences of people with disabilities (people who use wheelchairs and people who are blind or partially sighted) in the city of Québec. More specifically, I am interested in the ways in which human/non-human configurations enable or hinder the realization of people's potentials for inhabitation and, at the same time, how these configurations contribute to situations of disability, social participation, and the exercise of rights.

As part of my research, the ontographic proposition was seriously considered. In order to capture individual existences during the field phase and to approach the world from their point of view, a combination of classic ethnographic tools (participant observation, semi-structured interviews before and after the experience) was paired with participants' use of action cameras equipped with a GPS module. The cameras, worn on the body or attached to people's wheelchairs, made it possible to document everyday movements through videos, in-situ narrations of the experiences, and route tracing.

These layers of data are then compiled in the form of maps to show and describe the spatial distribution, direction, and intensity of the relations and interweavings of bodies with elements of the social and physical environment. The hundreds of hours of trips captured encompass the different ways people are and become in their concrete relation to the city and serve as the basis for analyzing strategies of inhabitation, the effects of environmental elements that sometimes act as obstacles and sometimes as facilitators through always singular arrangements, as well as the zones and intensities of inclusion and exclusion of the territory, both at the individual and collective levels.