Elisabeth De Schauwer
Elisabeth De Schauwer (°17.05.1976) has been working at the Department of Special Needs Education at Ghent University since October 2000. In the beginning, she combined a job as researcher in the Expertise Centre for Personal Future Planning for people with disabilities with working as a personal assistant of two children with disabilities. Since October 2004, she has worked as an assistant in the field of inclusive education and Disability Studies. In September 2011, she completed her PhD on participation of children with severe communicative disabilities in education and society. She extensively researched one case of a girl with cerebral palsy during regular primary education, paying special attention to the perspectives of children, parents and teachers.
In October 2011, she started as a doctoral assistant at the department. As of 2018, Elisabeth has been appointed as a visiting professor within the Department of Special Needs Education with a teaching and research assignment. Her research mainly focuses on the influence of disability on (pedagogical) relationships within educational and family contexts. She views disability as a socially lived category, reproduced and upheld by political, historical, economic, religious, cultural and social structures that privileges able-bodiedness. The lived experiences of the persons with disabilities and their natural networks are of essential importance to make sense of the complexity of disability. Her theoretical input very often deals with philosophical concepts from post-structuralism, post-humanism and new materialism. She works with innovative qualitative approaches such as portraiture, collective biography, art-based research, etc. She is the (co-)supervisor of several PhD’s and research projects that start from the interdisciplinary approach of Disability Studies. In this way, she wants to do research that serves social justice. Move-ability instead of dis-ability.
In terms of education, she is responsible for the course Diversity and Inclusion (2nd Bachelor Education Sciences), Training and Practice in/outside Flanders (2nd Master Special Needs Education), Coaching and Diversity (Ugent). She is co-teacher in Coaching and Consultation (2nd Master) and Orthopedagogical Synthesis (2nd Master). She also supervises master's thesis research (1st and 2nd Master). She is the diversity coordinator for the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ugent and member of the commission Diversity and Inclusion of Ugent.
She is still involved in coaching various teams in inclusive education. She works closely with the NGO’s Parents for Inclusion (parent organization) and Our New Future (self-advocacy movement). She is chairperson of the local consultation platform of secondary education within the city of Ghent.
An overview of publications and contact information can be found here.