About the project
Disability is one of the clearest predictors of social marginalization and an enduring problem for global sustainable development. Although disability in recent decades has become enshrined in the framework and discourse of human rights, progress has been slow or absent in socioeconomic terms.
There is a gap between rhetoric and results in policy: Disability still correlates with poverty, low levels of education and employment, and relatively poorer life outcomes in affluent as well as less affluent societies.
We therefore ask whether current political, legal and cultural understandings of disability amount to a misrecognition that actually hinders material progress.
Objectives
The primary objective is to provide knowledge about the politics of disability identity that will help counter the mechanisms of marginalization.
The secondary objectives are to investigate:
• how disability is normatively framed in the fields of education, employment, culture, and the public sphere,
• what characterizes the relative progress of different groups of people with disabilities in these fields, and
• how normative framings enable or hinder progress for different groups of people with disabilities.
Research team
- Principal Investigator Associate Professor Jan Grue, the Department of Sociology and Human Geography, UiO
- Associate Professor Luca Tateo, the Department of Special Needs Education, UiO
- Associate Professor Alexi Gugushvili, the Department of Sociology and Human Geography, UiO
- Senior Researcher Halvor Hanish, AFI, Oslo Metropolitan University
- Senior Researcher Jon Erik Finnvold, NOVA, Oslo Metropolitan University
- Senior Researcher Therese Dokken, NOVA, Oslo Metropolitan University
- Doctoral Research Fellow, Marte Oppedal Vale, the Department of Special Needs Education, UiO
International advisory board
- Susan Schweik, UC Berkeley
- Don Kulick, Uppsala University
- Tom Shakespeare, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Project period
1 August 2021 - 31 July 2025
Financing
The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway (SAMKUL). The total grant is NOK 11.968.000.