By Chinelo Obogo
A UK-based Nigerian educationist, Dr. Abass Isiaka, has been awarded the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship to conduct research at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia (UEA), UK.
The Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships support exceptional individuals in the early stage of their academic careers with a proven track record to undertake significant and publishable research at a UK university for three years.
Dr. Isiaka, a 2016 graduate of the University of Ilorin, received a Commonwealth Scholarship in 2018 to study for a Masters degree in Education, Public Policy and Equity at the University of Glasgow. He, thereafter, completed his PhD in Inclusive Education at UEA in 2024.
During his fellowship, which will run from 2026 to 2029, he will work on a research project titled ‘Disabling by Design: Recasting The Future of Higher Education Policies in Africa.’ The study aims to develop a social history of higher education in relation to disability inclusion, tracing developments from 1940 to the present.
According to him, the project will adopt a histo-futurist approach and involve collaboration with a Disabled People’s Organisation (DPO) to reimagine an alternative future for persons with disabilities (PWDs) in West Africa.
He added that the project will “investigate the construction, representation, and inclusion (or exclusion) of disability in higher education policies in West Africa from 1940 to the present, drawing on archival research from the UK and Nigeria.”
He said he was honoured to have been selected for the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, describing the award as an affirmation of his longstanding interest and research into disability inclusion and widening participation in higher education in Africa.
He also disclosed that he would collaborate with the Joint National Association for Persons with Disabilities in Nigeria (JONAPWD) to investigate how co-produced historical knowledge about disability inclusion could enhance Disabled People’s Organisations’ (DPOs) ability to imagine and advocate for inclusive and desirable social policies.