Disabled staff and researchers distinguish access from belonging

Updated Sep 07, 2026

student voice

Ben Whitburn and Jonathan Vincent explore disability and belonging through accounts from 19 participants across 11 UK institutions. Their 2026 Higher Education paper asks readers to reconsider what institutional inclusion means.

What the full paper shows

The sample included 16 disabled staff members, three also undertaking doctorates, and three full-time PhD students. Interviews informed a postqualitative analysis combining participants’ accounts with critical disability theory.

The authors develop four interpretive flows: affective belonging, divergence from inclusion, relational belonging and un/belonging as transgression. Accounts describe exhausting access negotiations, supportive relationships and staff networks that could be both valuable and constraining. Withdrawal could express resistance to institutional expectations rather than simple disengagement.

Crucially, the authors do not present these flows as fixed themes or generalisable findings. They explicitly resist reducing belonging to an outcome, metric or comparison. The study does not establish legal compliance or the prevalence of experiences across universities.

Implications for listening

Our recommendation is to involve disabled students and staff in deciding what questions matter and how accounts should be interpreted. Make participation accessible and consider the burden of repeated requests to describe difficult experiences.

If comment analysis is used, retain context and routes for disagreement with the categories. It serves a different purpose from this paper’s postqualitative inquiry. A count of access complaints should not be presented as a measure of belonging, and the absence of a comment should not be treated as evidence of a positive experience.

FAQ

Does receiving an adjustment necessarily mean someone feels they belong?

The participants’ accounts distinguish those experiences. Review both practical access and how institutional interactions are experienced.

Can this study supply a belonging score?

No. Its conceptual approach expressly challenges that use.

Reference

Ben Whitburn and Jonathan Vincent (2026). ‘I’m just the nuisance crip’: Postqualitative flows of un/belonging for disabled staff and PGR students across UK universities. Higher Education.

Correction, 7 September 2026: following full-text review, clarified the sample and restored the authors’ explicit caution against metrics and categorical comparison. Revised the product application accordingly.