Alex Murray

Research student

Alex Murray is affiliated with The Open University Law School.

You can email Alex Murray directly; but for media enquiries please contact a member of The Open University's Media Relations team.

Biography

Alex’s research focuses on invisible disabilities and the UK welfare state. Alex is exploring how tribunal appeals for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) have become a site for the performative enactment of disabled identities. She is supervised by Dr Matthew Howard and Dr Caroline Derry.

Alex was awarded a First Class Honours degree in History and a Master’s degree in Medieval and Early Modern Studies from the University of Kent. During this time, she developed an interest in gender, performativity and interdisciplinary studies.

Before joining the Law School at the Open University, Alex spent several years in the charity sector working for health and social care charities in user involvement and quality assurance. During this time, Alex worked with people with learning disabilities, mental health support needs and people who had cared for someone living with a terminal illness. These experiences fostered an interest in qualitative approaches to understanding identity, systems and cultures. Personal experience with chronic invisible illness and an increasing awareness of the importance of the laws and regulations that govern the welfare state led Alex to pursue a PhD combining these interests.

Alex’s research interests include performativity, welfare state/social security law, identity, citizenship, gender and invisible illnesses/disabilities. Alex is a member of Chronically Academic (CA), a network of students and academics with disabilities and chronic conditions. Alex took over CA’s twitter account while presenting at a PG symposium to highlight the additional challenges of attending conferences and researching as a PhD student with a chronic illness.

Current research

Performative disabled identities: Exploring the interactions between people living with invisible disabilities and legal processes following the Welfare Reform Act 2012

My research examines how the tribunal appeals process for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) shapes how people with invisible disabilities perform their disabled identities. The Welfare Reform Act 2012 (WRA 2012) introduced new regulations that tightened eligibility criteria for disability benefits, cut the social welfare budget and increased the responsibility of private companies for the administration of benefits. The overturn rate for decisions made by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) at tribunal has steadily increased since PIP was first introduced (with the overturn rate currently at 70%). These changes have effectively transformed the tribunal service into the safety net for people wishing to dispute their rejected claims for benefits or contest their official disabled status. As a result, the PIP appeal tribunal has become the arena for the performative enactment of disabled identities. Qualitative research with those involved in the tribunal process will enable me to identify how and why the tribunal interprets the regulations differently to the private assessors and DWP decision makers, and how this environment shapes the performance of identities for with invisible disabilities engaging in the appeals process.