Guiding Research Questions
The project is interested in prevailing social norms affecting life courses of persons with disabilities from early childhood to old age in Ghana and other West African countries. Particular attention will be paid on the significance of institutionalized life course patterns for people with disabilities and the influence of the dynamics of social change and modernization processes on the construction of life courses.
Furthermore, the effects of social and material context factors on the success or failure of biographical transition processes of people with disabilities are of interest. This includes the interplay of informal support from family, neighbourhood, self-help and charitable organizations with the expanding state-organized social security and service systems in Ghana and other West African states.
The following overriding research questions will be guiding the project:
- What life course patterns and transitional structures exist in West Africa and how are they experienced by people with disabilities?
- How do ‘transition processes’ as ‘mediating task between individual human life and social structure’ develop in the life courses of people with disabilities in West African societies (transition structures and subjective experience)?
- Which implications can be derived for the planning and design of inclusive social protection and service systems and for inclusive local development planning?
Research Projects
Migrants with Disability in Ghana: A View of Gender Disparity in Challenges, Coping Mechanisms and their Contribution to Development (Anna Boakyewah Bentil, Centre for Migration Studies, University of Ghana)
Representing Disability Challenges, Rights and Privileges Through Art, Proverbs, Symbols and Posters in Domestic and Public Spaces (Ayine Akolgo, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana)
Accessibility and use of Public Transport Services by Persons with Disabilities (Dominic Edem Hotor, Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana)
Praxis in Transition: Analysis of Emerging Learning Technologies on Students with Disability (Esmerlinda Korkor Ofoe, Department of Adult Education and Human Resource Studies, University of Ghana)
Gender and Sexuality over the life course of persons with disabilities; a study of women with physical disabilities in Ghana (Esther Kalua Atujona, Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana)
Persons with Disabilities and Leadership: Exploring Notions, Norms, Customs and Practices of Selected Cases in Ghana (James Kwabena Bomfeh, Department of Integrated Development Studies, University of Cape Coast)
Speaking the Unspoken: Changing Socio-Cultural Perspectives of Disability in Ghana through the Literary Arts (Kofi Amankwah Asihene, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana)
A holistic examination of the disability culture in Ghana: The position of persons with physical disabilities within families, communities and the nation (Nora Mintah Darko, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana)