Programme Director Mark Harrison presents an overview of Disability KaR's 'thematic research agenda', and the concepts essential to its delivery.

Since taking over as Programme Director in September 2004 my priority, together with that of the Disability KaR team, has been to open up the Programme to greater involvement of disabled people from the South and the North. The aim was to ensure that work done under the Programme reflected a genuine emancipatory research approach, with disabled people taking a leading rather than a supporting role.

It was the Programme's belief that this would not only result in high quality outputs, but also ones which, because they were firmly grounded in lived experience, would be directly relevant to the concerns of disabled people. In turn it would be more likely that any policy and practice following from the research would be both sustainable and positively transforming.

First steps: consultation

To start the process, representatives of Disabled People's International (DPI) and individual disabled people's organisations (DPOs) were consulted on what the research agenda should encompass. Further consultation occurred at the Malawi roundtable, which brought together many Southern DPOs and other stakeholders. A key output of this roundtable was a detailed list of research topics and, as importantly, a model for how the work should be done.

As a result of these meetings, four short-term research projects were directly commissioned from Southern-based disabled researchers by the policy project. Nine other pieces of research were incorporated into a thematic research prospectus.

Choosing the projects

This prospectus was sent out to disability organisations and researchers worldwide. The criteria for judging proposals were based on quality, the involvement of disabled people as researchers and collaborations between Southern- and Northern-based researchers. Seven research projects were commissioned, all led by or involving disabled people as researchers.

Of central importance was involving disabled people from the South as equal partners in either leading the research or as members of the research teams. So often, as subsequent research in Mozambique and South Africa discovered, DPOs are used as bit-part players or sub-contractors in Northern agencies' agendas. The Disability KaR Programme has tried to model a new way of working, which enables disabled people to set the research agenda through upstream engagement, puts disabled people in the driving seat in the research process and, as active participants, builds their research capacity from the bottom up. This is what we understand as capacity building, empowerment and emancipatory research.

Of course, the proof of the effectiveness of our approach has to be judged by the quality of the research, how the process itself has brought disabled people together internationally and the way in which research capacity of DPOs has been strengthened.

Just the beginning...

One thing is clear: what we have attempted to do in the Disability KaR Programme is only a first step in addressing the traditional methods by which disability and development research is carried out. There remains a great deal yet to do. The research capacity of DPOs must be increased in a sustained manner. Power relations between researchers and the researched need to be continually challenged. And finally, as Mike Oliver1 has said, "it seems ... that [applied or action research approaches] are concerned to allow previously excluded groups to be included in the game as it is, whereas emancipatory strategies are concerned about both conceptualising and creating a different game, where no one is excluded in the first place."

Formulating this 'different game' is essential if research on disability and development is to become an effective tool in bringing disabled people and their concerns fully into the development mainstream.

Note

1. Mike Oliver is Professor of Disability Studies, University of Greenwich, London

Read the thematic research reports.

To contact Mark Harrison, email mark.harrison@uea.ac.uk