Centre for Disability Research

Our mission, aims and objectives

Our mission

• To engage with disabled people and their organisations to carry out research that is relevant to the lives of people with a range of impairments and advances the rights of disabled people. 
• To undertake research on the experiences of disabled people throughout Scotland, the UK and internationally. 

Our aim

To provide authoritative evidence on the lives of disabled people, the barriers they face, identifying and exploring the processes and structures that result in inequity and discrimination or promote their flourishing.

Whilst our primary focus is on the barriers that disabled people experience, we also examine the role impairment plays in their lives and its intersection with disablement.

In carrying out this work we aim to work closely with disabled people and their organisations, collaborating with them at all levels of the research process.

Our objectives

• Exploring and describing the structures, processes and factors that disable or enable people with a variety of impairments in Scotland, the UK and internationally.
• Developing and employing a barriers-based approach in understanding the experiences of disabled people.
• Developing innovative and inclusive research methodologies and methods that foreground participatory approaches and inclusion.
• Promoting the profile of the Centre within disability studies and the wider social policy community.
• To ensure that the Centre is identified as a source of both national and international research excellence.
• Developing and maintaining links with UK and international disability research centres committed to advancing the rights of disabled people.
• Producing and disseminating policy recommendations to effect positive change in the lives of disabled people.
• Ensuring all our work is produced in formats that are widely available and accessible to all.