Nidhi Singal

Nidhi Singal is Professor of Disability and Inclusive Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. She is a leading scholar in the field of inclusive education, with a particular focus on children and young people with disabilities in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Over the last two decades her research, teaching, policy and civic engagement have demonstrated the critical importance of identifying, listening and responding to the experiences and needs of persons with disabilities within the wider field of international and comparative education and research. In so doing, her scholarship seeks to maximise the potential for this research to inform effective policy development and positive social and cultural change. As a result, Nidhi’s work has contributed significantly to how international education research is framed, and also shaped a range of associated policy agendas. It has, in particular, informed a now widely appreciated shift in emphasis, moving beyond questions of access towards an examination of the quality of education that children with disabilities receive. Her scholarship problematises simplistic binaries between mainstream and specialist settings and proposes a more fluid exploration of how inclusion/exclusion are experienced. Her work has also contributed to parallel discussions about research ethics: particularly issues around the ethics of dissemination in international and comparative education, and representation within research itself. Nidhi has worked with a wide range of key international agencies and non-governmental organisations. Among many developments arising from her work, she led the drafting of the International Statement of Action at the first Global Disability Summit. In 2018, she was appointed to the Technical Advisory Committee for the Inclusive Education Initiative, hosted by the World Bank. Her present engagements include contributions to the IIEP-UNESCO/UNICEF Foundations of Disability Inclusive Education Sector Planning Course. At Cambridge, Nidhi supervises Doctoral and Masters students with a particular focus on inclusive education. She also coordinates the MPhil in Education, Globalization and International Development. Working with her research group she launched and convenes the Cambridge Network for Disability and Education Research (CaNDER). She is also Vice President of Hughes Hall College, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. More details of her work can be found at: https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/singal/