The ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities resulted in an impetus among nation states, including the EU and Ireland, to ensure that students can access an inclusive, quality, and free education at all levels and on an equal basis with others (United Nations, 2006). This has been reinforced by UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 which aims to ensure an inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

In Ireland, the number of disabled students attending Higher Education at undergraduate level has increased and disabled students now comprise of 7.1% of the student population (Ahead, 2019). This increase has occurred in response to a national policy (HEA, 2015), and the recognition of the contribution of education to successful life outcomes (Ebersold, 2011). It coincided with an EU focus on lifelong learning, and within Ireland there has been an increase of 16% engagement among the general population at postgraduate level in the last five years (HEA, 2017). Yet disabled students still only comprise 2.3% of the total postgraduate population (AHEAD, 2019).    

It is well understood that once disabled students’ access HE they face additional challenges, including attitudinal, structural, and academic barriers that their peers do not face. Certainly, it is experience that disabled students are not well represented at the decision-making table. Persistent barriers have been found to have a major impact on disabled students’ sense of value, ability to maintain friendships, and to develop a sense of belonging, including in class (Rath, 2020), and are insufficiently exposed to and supported in the identity of being knowledge producers including researchers (Lillywhite & Wolbring, 2022) potentially impacting upon their transition to postgraduate research.

Moreover, Lambert notes that, young disabled postgraduate students appear few and exceptional (2001). It is recognised that disabled postgraduate students face a range of barriers including poor supervision, lack of support, low expectations (Atibuni, 2019), financial barriers and lack of understanding of their needs (Rath, McCarthy, 2021). Furthermore, there is a need to rethink the environment if they are to be included as they should be (Quirke, McCarthy, & Mc Guckin, 2018).

Yet while National and EU policies continue to influence thinking, two of the three authors with lived experience of not just disability, but researching at doctoral level with a disability, decided to directly advocate for change both in thinking and practice across their academy.  It is this voice, and its valuable contribution, that resulted in positive change.  Change that must be included and continue to be supported if research and higher education is to keep abreast with global realities. Policies including the UN SDG’s will continue to influence future participation and activities in higher education – this paper is in essence a call for action to the education research community to support such activities and moreover, those that lead it.

This paper reflects on an enquiry framed by the literature, the learning outcomes from doctoral research and the lived experience of two of the authors as they undertook that postgraduate research.   The enquiry also includes data from engagement with other disabled postgraduate students and their voice adds to the frustration’s experienced on the ground. Overall, the enquiry resulted in a journey of advocacy for disabled student’s engaged actively in research and learning at postgraduate level.

There is a need to be more inclusive in higher education at the highest level – this paper sets out some of the thinking that will assist in developing more inclusive practice across the academy.

This paper builds on a paper given at ECER 2021 focusing on the social engagement experiences of disabled students in higher education (Rath, 2021) and continues the discussion which asks the question are disabled students engaged at every level in higher education. This paper asks: 1. What are the experiences of disabled postgraduate students? It will detail how Rath 2020’s research on the “social engagement experiences of disabled students in higher education” influenced further investigation in the area focusing on the experiences of disabled postgraduate students. The knowledge created was utilised to: 2. Develop an institutional and national structure to hear the voice of disabled postgraduate students and bring about policy development. By adopting a framework which combined a transformative approach with the bioecological model (Rath, 2020) it allowed the researchers to place the student at the heart of the work. As disabled researchers with a disability rights standpoint, the philosophical assumptions of the transformative paradigm offered the researchers a framework to directly engage disabled students, and through the bioecological model permitted the examination of the barriers and enablers to their engagement in the system around them (Rath, 2020). This research expanded that approach to generate further data. The rationale for this is that these approaches offer an authentic opportunity to amplify the voice of those often excluded from the research arena. Some of the strengths of using such qualitative methods is that they offer the opportunity to clearly make the “…connections between structural change and attitude change” and “…its capacity to explain “what is going on” in complex situations involving interdependent individuals, institutions, groups, and systems” (O'Day & Killeen, 2002, p. 10). Furthermore, it is argued that the underlying beliefs of “…qualitative research as well as its methods of data collection and analysis, it is highly conducive to illuminating the often-hidden interactions of cultural attitudes, institutional processes, public policies, and individual lives” (O'Day & Killeen, 2002). There were a number of different phases to this enquiry including: a consultation process that sought to hear the voice of disabled postgraduate students; a survey which gathered further data based on themes that emerged from the consultation process. This approach yielded a large quantity of extremely rich data. This was analysed using a thematic approach as outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006).

Using the bioecological model of inclusive education (Hewett, Douglas, McLinden, & Keil, 2016) alongside our findings we identified barriers and solutions at every level of the system. Some of the key barriers to engagement of disabled postgraduate students included: o Lack of Funding Support o Failure to include the disabled voice o Loneliness and Isolation o Failure nationally to focus on policies to support disabled postgraduate education In response to these findings the researchers brought about change at every level of the system within higher education: • Micro / Mesosystem: o Establishment of the Trinity College Dublin Forum for Disabled Staff & Postgraduate Students. o A monthly Virtual Disabili-Tea to help combat loneliness and isolation. • Exosystem o A structure within the University to hear the voice of disabled postgraduates at management level through the TCD Equality Committee. • Macrosystem: o Contributed to the development of national policy o Establishment of a National Disabled Postgraduate Advisory Committee reporting to the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. This research demonstrates that authentic understanding of the lived experience contributes positively to the development of effective policy (Johnson, Shephard, & West, 2021) in relation to disabled postgraduate students in HE (Rath, 2020). It highlights the importance of having disabled voices at the decision-making table for the effective implementation of national and institutional policy development, creation of inclusive structures, support and resources to enable the engagement of disabled postgraduate students at postgraduate level. Finally, as this inquiry unfolded, it is important to note that it was the personal experience of conducting research and engaging with the theory by disabled students that informed the development of innovative practice on their campus – a practice we believe would benefit all students – and moreover - educational researchers in our changing world.

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