ADCET Webinar: BlakAbility - Higher Education’s Role in Improving Life Outcomes for Indigenous People Living with Disability

Wed 21 May 2025 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm AEST

Online

Event details

ADCET is delighted to welcome Associate Professor Sheelagh Daniels-Mayes for her presentation on the BlakAbility framework.

Australian Indigenous people are at least twice as likely to live with a disability or disabling chronic health condition. Intensifying this situation is the reality that Indigenous people with disability frequently encounter both racism and disability-related discrimination. Yet, scant research into such exclusion or ways of improving life outcomes through education or employment exists.

This five-year study investigates how Australian universities have a unique opportunity and responsibility to improve life outcomes and self-determination of staff and students. BlakAbility is an emerging culturally responsive approach to disability that centres Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, understanding that those with disability simply represent the normal range of human diversity.

However, as will be illustrated in this presentation, this cultural understanding conflicts with the dominant models of disability resulting in numerous systemic barriers. This complex program of research is Indigenous-led, co-designed, interdisciplinary framed within Indigenous knowledges. Through yarning interviews with relevant university students and staff, and analysis of policies and strategies, new opportunities are being identified for the development of culturally safe-disability confident practices within and beyond the university.

The presentation will discuss how intersectionality offers opportunity for change while revealing the impact of interlocking sites of discrimination.

Presenter

Associate Professor Sheelagh Daniels-Mayes is a Gomeroi woman who has low vision. Located at the University of Melbourne she lectures in Indigenous Studies, and is Deputy Associate Dean, Diversity and Inclusion – Disability, at the Faculty of Arts. Sheelagh is the Chief Investigator of a Discovery Indigenous Australian Research Council grant titled, 'Improving Life Outcomes for Indigenous People Living with a Disability: Lessons from Australia's Universities'. Her multi-disciplinary team are developing a framework referred to as BlakAbility, a culturally-safe and disability-confident approach to policy and practice.

The webinar is free to attend, and it will be live-captioned.

Registrations for this webinar are now open

ADCET is hosted by the University of Tasmania

Contact details

Event website
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ip4f4kMiTNuw36H72x43XA

Event times in your timezone