"Severe Disability - Education - Health" Scientific network for the analysis of participation conditions and barriers of people with attributed severe disabilities

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Michael Wagner
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning ; Empirical Social Research ; Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 535303201

The ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) includes the demand for equal participation of all people in society. Under the global target of "inclusion", a variety of initiatives have been launched in the last decade to realise and expand social participation for people with disabilities. In contrast, national and international studies show that the group of people ascribed with the attribute 'severe disability' continues to be marginalised and excluded in different areas of life, such as education and health. People with severe disabilities form a very heterogeneous group characterised by high vulnerability and often lifelong complex care and support needs in all areas of life. Empirical studies exist only on individual questions and stand unconnected to each other. Interdisciplinary approaches, e.g. between (special) education and medicine, are hardly ever linked. The aim of the planned network is to initiate sustainable and in-depth cooperation for researchers from different disciplinary perspectives, primarily (special) education and medicine. Questions of research and theory development for the analysis of participation conditions and barriers of people with attributed severe disabilities will be targeted. Therefor, three different complexes of questions - severe disability - education - health - are focused on and brought into a context. Another focus of the network's work is the promotion of early career researchers within the framework of a PhD colloquium as well as possible cooperation in externally funded research projects and intensification of the cooperation of the scientific community. The targeted results include fundamental research on the process of attributing 'severe disability', the analysis and further development of transdisciplinary scientific findings and of research methodological and methodological questions, the creation of a website to make the network's work publicly visible, the organisation of a symposium and the compilation of the results of the network's work in an edited book. The network consists of 18 permanent members and is supplemented by 10 early career students. It is initially planned from autumn 2023 to autumn 2026 and includes two network meetings per year.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Karin Terfloth