Working Together, Learning Together. Towards Universal Design for Research

‘Working Together, Learning Together’ (WTLT) is the name of the nationwide inclusive research project in the Netherlands we conducted from 2016 tot 2020.

Within this research project, the PhD research work of Sofie Sergeant involved an inclusive and action-orientated reflective practice of developing training for other inclusive research teams. The PhD manuscript is built up upon a collection of five papers.

Two research questions are guiding:

• What are the catalysing ingredients and conditions for organising inclusive research in order to overcome attitudinal barriers, barriers in the social process, material barriers and within-person barriers?
• Based upon these ingredients and conditions: what kind of training and coaching is needed?

The forlaying PhD research work identifies and explores four conditions for inclusive research:

• Safe research spaces and sense of belonging;
• Room for collaborative learning and competence building;
• Multi-sensory communication and research methods;
• Time for reflection on power, ownership, vulnerability, prejudice, stigma, and the risk of tokenism.

The developed training is referred to as ‘the CABRIO-training’: a coaching and training program for ‘transdisciplinary’ teams consisting of researchers with academic background, professionals from diverse disciplines and research team members with disability experience.

Sofie Sergeant works as the education coordinator and researcher for the Dutch organization Disability Studies in Nederland (DSiN) and for VU Amsterdam, Medical Humanities. Her PhD project is rooted in a national project funded by ZonMW ‘Working Together, Learning Together’: an inclusive research project on developing training and coaching for inclusive research teams.

ISBN: 9789463712941