Navigating and experiencing academia: perspectives from deafblind researchers

Abstract

This study examines how deafblind scholars experience and navigate academia, exploring the structural, temporal, and spatial barriers they encounter and the strategies they develop to navigate them. While deaf and/or disabled scholars have critically examined academic access and accountability, the perspectives of deafblind scholars remain underrepresented. Drawing on survey responses from ten deafblind scholars across three continents, this paper asks: ‘How do deafblind scholars experience and navigate academia?’ Findings indicate challenges similar to those of deaf and disabled scholars, alongside practices that are specific to deafblind scholarship. Participants describe adapting research practices and reconstructing social dimensions of academic work, often prioritizing present-oriented, community-based engagement over linear career trajectories. In some cases, scholars selectively disengage from inaccessible structures in favor of self-determined and collaborative modes of working. These findings extend existing literature foregrounding deafblind scholars’ epistemic contributions and highlighting the need for greater institutional recognition of access as relational, situated and ongoing.