2025 Sessions

12 March: Student Disability Collectives as Powerful Platforms

Time: 12pm - 1:30pm (Brisbane time)

Format: Presentation and Q+A

Description: Recent research undertaken by Ebe Ganon at Deakin University demonstrates how disabled university students are revolutionising support and engagement on campus through Student Disability Collectives (SDCs). These grassroots groups, operating independently across Australian universities, are bringing traditionally underserved students together to collectivise, advocate, and support each other. By creating their own networks and resources, students are driving meaningful change that traditional university services and staff-led initiatives often miss. This research reveals SDCs as powerful platforms for student empowerment, personal growth, and rights advocacy. The findings challenge universities and practitioners to rethink student support, emphasising the importance of student-led initiatives that genuinely respond to lived experiences of disability. This research offers a blueprint for more responsive, authentic, and impactful student support services, and demonstrates the immense value of student-led offerings and advocacy on campus.

Speaker: Ebe Ganon is a community engagement and inclusion practitioner, the Board Chair of Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA), and the winner of the 2024 National Awards for Disability Leadership Change Making Award. Ebe uses her lived and professional expertise to advocate for inclusive and accessible tertiary education, employment, and mainstream fitness settings. With a background working in equity, diversity, and inclusion in higher education, as well as experience in the disability sector, Ebe aims to support positive change in the tertiary sector by amplifying the voices of staff and students who have been traditionally underserved by further education settings in Australia. As a former undergraduate and postgraduate student with disability, equity and diversity practitioner, and casual sessional academic across a range of universities, Ebe deeply understands the complex and challenging environments within which student voice and student equity initiatives must succeed. Ebe holds a Masters of Disability and Inclusion from Deakin University, and a Certificate IV in Australian Sign Language (Auslan) from Deaf Connect. Ebe is hoping to commence a PhD in disability studies in the latter-half of 2025.

Register here: https://buytickets.at/studentvoiceaustralasia/1566438