Xuan Thuy Nguyen

I am an interdisciplinary researcher, teacher, learner, and community builder. My academic and professional interests center around young women and girls with disabilities in the Global South. I am currently the Project Director of a Partnership Development Project entitled “Learning with and from the Global South: Opportunities for engaging girls & young women with disabilities across Southern spaces” (ENGAGE), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) [2021-2024]. In collaboration with academics, activists, and Disabled People’s Organizations in India, South Africa, and Vietnam, the project examines how young women and girls with disabilities and partners in the Global South can engage and build on their leadership potential through decolonial and inclusive knowledge systems and practices.

I am also the Principal Investigator of a collaborative research project, Transforming Disability Knowledge, Research, and Activism (TDKRA), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) [2016-20] and extended to 2023. TDKRA aims to challenge the gaps in knowledge production among girls and women with disabilities in Vietnam by connecting knowledge, research, and activism for their inclusion. Additionally, I am a co-investigator of a SSHRC’s Partnership Project, entitled Engendering Disability-Inclusive Development (EDID) [2020-27]. This project centers on fostering inclusion of diverse women and girls with disabilities in Canada, Haiti, South Africa, and Vietnam by building on local knowledge systems and creating participation opportunities for these groups in transnational research. The EDID-Vietnam case study prioritizes representation and participation of girls and women with disabilities in decision-making using decolonial disability studies and arts-based research methods. These collaborative, decolonial and sustainable partnership projects provide synergies for our collective thinking, research, and praxis within the Decolonial Disability Studies Collective at Carleton University.

I am passionate about working with students, scholars, activists, and community-organizers in building decolonial spaces for knowledge production and praxis within transnational contexts. In addition to working with students, I enjoy mentoring those from diverse backgrounds to support their intellectual development and social activism. I have mentored several undergraduate and graduate students across Canadian and Vietnamese universities, and I am available to supervise students in Canada/the Global North to engage in transnational social justice research and activism with disabled girls and women in the South.

Courses:

• CHST/DBST 3304: Disability and Childhood: Transnational Perspectives
• CHST-HUMR 3033: Children’s Rights
• DBST 3001 Disability Studies: Policy and Activism

* I am on sabbatical leave from January 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023.

Awards:

• FASS Research Excellence Award, 2022-2023.
• Learning with and from the Global South: Opportunities for engaging girls & young women with disabilities across Southern spaces. Research funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Partnership Development Grant 890-2020-0093 [2021-2024] (Principal Investigator/Project Director).
• Towards inclusive, collaborative, and decolonial relationships with the global South: Lessons learned from a global North/South partnership project, International Research SEED Grant (IRSG) [2021-2023] (Principal Investigator).
• Engendering disability-inclusive development. Research funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Partnership Grant 895-2020-1015 [2020-2027] (Co-Investigator).
• Transforming knowledge and activism through engaging women and girls with disabilities in Vietnam in participatory research. Research funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Insight Grant 435-2016-1177 [2016-2020] (Principal Investigator).
• Monitoring educational rights for girls with disabilities in Vietnam: Towards a transformative approach on understanding social justice in education. Research funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Insight Development Grant 430-2013-0979 [2013-2016] (Principal Investigator).

Selected Publications:

Book

Nguyen X. T. (2015). The journey to inclusion. Rotterdam: Sense/Brill Publishers (published within the Studies in Inclusive Education Series STIE, Volume 29)

Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters

Nguyen, X. T. (in press). Decolonizing research with girls with disabilities in the Global South. In Tierney, R., F. Rizvi, & K. Ercikan (Eds). International Encyclopedia of Education (4^th edition). Elsevier publishers.

Nguyen, X. T. (in press). Decolonial disability studies. In Mill, M., & R. Sanchez (Eds). Crip authorship. New York: New York University Press.

Nguyen, X. T., Mitchell, C., Bernasky, T. (in press). Qualitative visual methods in research with girls and women with disabilities in the Global South: Critical reflections on disability rights in transnational contexts. In M. Rioux, J. Viera, A. Buettgen, & E. Zubrow (Eds.) Handbook of Disability: Critical thoughts and social change in a globalizing world. Springer.

Stienstra, D., & Nguyen, X. T. (2020). Opening to the Possible: Girls and Women with Disabilities Engaging in Vietnam. In Wiebe, S. M. & L. Levac (Eds.). Creating spaces for engagement. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Nguyen, X. T. (2019). Unsettling “inclusion” in the global South: A post-colonial and intersectional approach to disability, gender, and education. In Schuelk, M. J., C. Johnstone, G. Thomas, & A. Artiles (Eds.). The SAGE handbook of inclusion and diversity in education (pp. 28-40). London: Sage.

Mitchell, C., De Lange, N., & Nguyen, X. T. (2016). The participation of girls with disabilities in Vietnam in a photovoice project. In J. Coffey, S. Budgeon, & H. Cahill (Eds). Learning bodies – the body in youth and childhood studies. Singapore: Springer.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Nguyen, X. T., Dang, T. L., & Mitchell, C. (2021). How can girls with disabilities become activists in their own lives? Creating opportunity for policy dialogues through knowledge mobilization spaces. Agenda, 1-13.

Nguyen, X. T., Gonick, M., & Bui, T. (2021). Engaging girls with disabilities through cellphilming: Reflections on participatory visual research as a means of countering violence in the Global South. Childhood, 28(3), 380-394.

Nguyen, X. T., & Stienstra, D. (2021). Engaging girls and women with disabilities in the global South: Beyond cultural and geopolitical generalizations. Disability and the Global South, 8(2), 2035-2052.

Nguyen, X. T. (2020). Whose research is it? Reflection on participatory research with women and girls with disabilities in the global South. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 12(2), pp. 129-153.

Nguyen, X. T., & Mitchell, C. (2019). Disability, Intersectionality, and Struggles over Social Justice: Reframing Debates over Children’s Rights. Canadian Journal of Children’s Rights, 6(1), pp. 1-23. Available at https://ojs.library.carleton.ca/index.php/cjcr/article/view/2526

Nguyen, X. T., Stienstra, D., Gonick, M., Do, H., & Huynh, N. (2019). Unsettling research vs. activism: How might critical disability studies disrupt traditional research boundaries? Disability & Society, 34(7-8), 1042-1061.

Nguyen, X. T. (2018). Critical disability studies at the edge of global development: Why do we need to engage with Southern theory? Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 7(1), 1-25.

Nguyen, X. T., & Johnson, P. (2017). Transnational conversations in the context of disability rights: Building the potential for global activism. Third World Thematics, 20(20), 1-15.

Nguyen, X. T. (2016). Girls with disabilities in the Global South: Rethinking the politics of engagement, Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 9(2), special issue on Disability and Girlhood: Transnational Perspectives, 53-71.

Erevelles, N., & Nguyen, X. T. (2016). Disability, girlhood, and vulnerability in transnational contexts. Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 9(2), special issue on Disability and Girlhood: Transnational Perspectives, 3-20.

Nguyen, X. T. (2015). Genealogies of disability in global governance: A Foucauldian critique of disability and development. Foucault Studies. Special issue on New work on Foucault and Disability, 19, 67-83. Available at http://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-studies/article/view/4825/0

Nguyen, X. T., Mitchell, C., De Lange, N., & Fritsch, K. (2015). Engaging girls with disabilities in Vietnam: Making their voices count. Disability & Society, special issue on Disability: Who counts? What count?, 30(5), 773-787.

Nguyen, X. T., & Mitchell, C. (2014). Inclusion in Vietnam: An intersectionality perspective on girls with disabilities and education. Childhood, 21(3), 324-338.

Nguyen, X. T (2010). Deconstructing “Education for All”: Discourse, power, and the politics of inclusion. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14(4), 341-355.

Film & Creative Productions

Transforming Disability Knowledge, Research, and Activism (TDKRA). (2020). Policy brief. Available at https://carleton.ca/tkaa/wp-content/uploads/TDKRA-PB_April-25.pdf

Interview with Nick Ward (2019). The journey to global inclusion. FASSinate 2020 (pp. 138-149). Available at https://carleton.ca/fass/wp-content/uploads/FASSinate-2020.pdf

Transforming Disability Knowledge, Research, and Activism (TDKRA). (2019). Our Journey. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIflV0zuL8k

Nguyen, X. T., Rahim, N., Miron, A., Dang, T. L., Mitchell, C. (2019). (Eds.). Envisioning inclusion: Transforming Disability Knowledge, Research, and Activism. Hanoi: Hong Duc Publishers.

Forthcoming Publications

Nguyen, X. T., Bernasky, T., Dang, T. L. (2022). Transforming Disability Knowledge, Research, and Activism (TDKRA) Final report. Ottawa: Carleton University.

Nguyen, X. T. (under review). Towards a decolonial approach to disability as knowledge and praxis: Unsettling the ‘colonial’ and re-imagining research as spaces of community struggles. In Afeworki A. R., & K. Soldatic (Eds). Disability and Intersectional Colonialities: Theoretical Approaches and Methodological Reflections. Routledge.

Graduate and Undergraduate Student Supervisions: