Navigating a research career with a disability
Posted by the Node, on 21 August 2023
With increasing focus on equity, diversity and inclusion in academia in recent years, disabled scientists/ scientists with disabilities, who face tremendous barriers navigating their academic careers, are still often left out of these discussions. Building on the success of the ‘Working in science with a disability’ session at the 2022 Young Embryologist Network (YEN) meeting, Issue 16 of Development features two Perspective articles on the topic of disability in research.
In the Perspective ‘Navigating a research career with a disability‘, five biologists share their lived experiences, including the obstacles and successes of undertaking a scientific career with a disability. One of the authors, Katharine Hubert, also wrote a longer piece on the Node to share her experience living with an invisible disability, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), while pursuing a PhD.
In ‘Disability and developmental biology’, Jack Morgan gives an overview of the current literature exploring disabled scientists’ experiences in academia and provides ample references, resources and further reading to spur our community towards authentic disability inclusivity in developmental biology. In the article, Jack also discusses findings from a survey conducted at the 2022 YEN meeting, with the hope to conduct a larger scale survey on the Node to gain valuable insight into the experiences of disabled scientists in our community — watch this space!
The Node is also keen to gather more voices from the developmental and stem biology community about this under-discussed topic — if you would like to write a piece, get in touch.
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I’d also like to point the readers to this fantastic and honest interview with Kelly Stevens: “Prioritizing diversity will help all of us” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41556-023-01217-6