Mad Knowledges and User-Led Research

“Diana Rose digs deeply and widely into how knowledge of madness is produced, by whom, in what ways, and to what ends. Her account is both erudite and infused with her own and others' experiences.”

—Sue E Estroff, Professor in the Department of Social Medicine, UNC School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, USA

This book presents a critical examination of the development of user involvement within research, and investigates the issues currently preventing a productive integration of Mad knowledges within research and practice. Drawing on social, linguistic and critical theories, it proposes the conditions needed to address the development of Mad epistemologies.


The author’s unique approach deliberately highlights her own positionality and draws on decades of experience as a service recipient, survivor, activist and researcher to illustrate the structural and symbolic barriers faced. Employing concepts including epistemic injustice, individualization, normalizationand structural violence, it suggests a radically new way of articulating ‘what’s the matter with us?’ In doing so, the book itself goes some way towards enacting the radical challenge to academic and epistemic hierarchies which, it is argued, will be required to further advance mad knowledges and user-led research. Crucially, it demonstrates how this approach can be both methodologically and conceptually rigorous.


This novel work holds important insights for students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences; particularly those working in the areas of critical psychology, disability studies, Mad studies, feminist studies, critical race theory, and Queer theory.

Diana Susan Rose retired in 2020 and is now Distinguished Honorary Professor at the Australian National University. She has had two academic careers, interspersed with a period of ‘living in the community’ having been retired from her first position on mental health grounds. She pioneereduser-focused research in a London NGO and subsequently worked at King’s College London where she became Professor of User-Led Research in 2013. Her previous works include This is Survivor Research (2009 co-edited with Peter Beresford, Alison Faulkner, Angela Sweeney, and Mary Nettle).