Research for Development Impact (RDI) network conference

During my time in China, I took the advantage of being in Asia and hopped to Australia, invited by Professor David Evans at the University of Sydney.

It was certainly a privilege to present at the Research for Development Impact (RDI) network conference in June with its full sponsorship. At the conference, academics and practitioners came together to debate and reflect on issues and challenges for partnerships, collaboration and impact. It was argued that these notions, which indicated things that were essential to academic research, could in practice became problematic. Issues of the sustainability of impact, the understanding of local contexts and research ethics especially when working in developing worlds were discussed through real examples. Attending the conference and listening to research in very different disciplines and contexts helped me to think about how I would approach similar challenges in the CECI project.

Many of the audiences who came to my presentation also worked on disability research in Asian contexts. Together we acknowledged shared barriers such as medical and charitable models of disability and difficulties to transform practices in mainstream schools. The question of how to define ‘impact’ was also asked given how difficult it was to challenge dominant ideas in a country. Meanwhile, it was absolutely great to see a lot of bottom-up initiatives happening, through partnerships with local communities, to negotiate space for alternative perspectives, representations and experiences.