Dr. Nidhi Singal

Dr. Nidhi Singal is a Professor of Disability and Inclusive Education in the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University. Nidhi’s core areas of research interest lie in addressing issues of educational inequity among marginalised groups in Southern contexts. She has worked extensively with children and young people with disabilities in South Asia and Africa. Her research has focused on the experiences of children with disabilities attending a range of different educational arrangements, the quality of teaching and learning in these settings, and the impact of schooling on short and long term outcomes. Another important dimension in her work has been the development of culturally sensitive approaches in educational research. She is particularly interested in critically examining power relations in North-South research partnerships, the ethics of research dissemination, and the impact of educational research on policy making for children with disabilities.

She has extensive experience of working with key international agencies such as, World Bank, UNESCO-IIEP and UNESCO, alongside disability specific international non-governmental organisations’ such as, Humanity and Inclusion and Light for the World assisting them in developing research projects, programme evaluation and policy work. Her work has contributed to key developments in the field of disability and education. For the first Global Disability Summit, co-hosted by the Department for International Development (UK) , International Disability Alliance and Government of Kenya, she led the drafting of the International Statement of Action,  “Accelerate Equitable and Quality Inclusive Education for Children and Youth with Disabilities” , which has been signed by 31 donor agencies, international NGOs, research organisations and global education networks.

In 2021, Nidhi was appointed Deputy Chair of the UNPRPD Partnership Advisory Group, hosted by UKRI. Among other current engagements, she is a member of the Technical Advisory Council of the World Bank’s Inclusive Education Initiative; is on the Advisory panel for the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative’s disability and gender report; and contributes to the IIEP-UNESCO/UNICEF Foundations of Disability-Inclusive Education Sector Planning Course. Previously, she has worked with the International Commission on Financing Global Education, as the Disability Expert on The Education Workforce Initiative. She was part of the Technical Advisory Review Team for the Global Education Monitoring Report on Inclusive Education (2020) and was commissioned to write a background paper.