Nidhi Singal

Position/Status

Lecturer
Fellow and Tutor, Hughes Hall

E-mail Address

sn241 @cam.ac.uk

Phone

(+44) 01223 767608

Qualifications

PhD, University of Cambridge
MPhil in Education, University of Cambridge
M.A. Clinical Psychology, University of Delhi
B.A. (Honours) Applied Psychology, University of Delhi

Membership of Professional Bodies/Associations

British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE)
Fellow, Cambridge Commonwealth Society

Profile

Nidhi trained as a clinical psychologist and worked with children and young adults in clinical and subsequently, a range of different educational settings. From 2000- 2004 she undertook a qualitative research focused on exploring the various meanings of inclusive education in an Indian context. This work has been taken forward as Nidhi was invited to be a Research consultant on a national level project working towards building inclusive schools across three states in India (2006-ongoing). She has also worked as a consultant for a range of international NGOs such as World Vision, helping them develop research projects and policies which support the inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream settings.

She is the international team leader for the Disability, Education and Poverty Project (DEPP) which is part of the Research Consortium on Educational Outcomes and Poverty (RECOUP) based at the Centre for Education and International Development, Cambridge. DEPP is researching the human, social and economic outcomes of education for young people with disabilities living in poverty, in Ghana, India, Kenya and Pakistan. The consortium itself is a partnership between seven different institutions and is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID).

Nidhi was also the Assistant Editor for the International Journal of Educational Research and is a reviewer for various journals and international research funding bodies. She has presented her work at various international conferences and research forums.

Academic area and links

Centre for Education and International Development
Education, Equality and Development Group
Inclusive and special education

Research Topics

Classroom based enquiry: role of teachers as researchers
Disability, poverty and development
Education for All
Poverty, ethnicity and special educational needs
Qualitative educational research in Southern countries
Southern perspectives on inclusive and special education

Current Research Projects

Disability, Education and Poverty Project (part of RECOUP, funded by the DFID)
'Who do you think you are?' A project exploring identities and constructions of self among Bangladeshi and Pakistani young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (funded by the Faculty of Education)
Developing inclusive schools: an action research project (funded by the National Council for Educational Research and Training, India)

Recently completed research project

Jigsaw project. Fitting the Pieces Together: home school expectations and their impact on children and their learning (funded by the R and D Fund, FoE)

Course Involvement

Doctoral supervisions
Masters (Coordinator: Perspectives on Inclusive and Special Education)
Practitioner Professional Development (PPD)
Undergraduate teaching across all three years

List of Publications

Singal, N. (in press) Doing disability research in a Southern context: challenges and possibilities. Disability & Society.

Singal, N. and Swann, M. (in press) Children's perceptions of themselves as learners. Research Papers in Education.

Singal, N. (2009) Education for children with disabilities in India. A background paper for EFA GMR 2010. UNESCO: Paris.

Singal, N. with Jeffery, R. (2009) Transitions to adulthood for young people with disabilities in India: Currents status and emerging prospects. Asia Pacific Disability Rehabilitation Journal, 20 (1) 15-40.

Miles, S. and Singal, N. (2009) The Education for All and Inclusive Education debate: Conflict, contradiction or opportunity? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 13 (7).

Singal, N. and Bhatti, F. with Malik, R (2009) Counting the invisible: understanding the lives of people with disabilities in Pakistan. RECOUP Working Paper 24 .

Singal, N., Jeffery, R., Jain, A., Sood, N (2009) "With education you can do anything; without education there's nothing you can do". Outcomes of schooling for young people with disabilities. RECOUP Working Paper 23.

Singal, N. (2009) Inclusion in the Real World: Practitioners Making Sense of Inclusive Education in Indian Classrooms, In M Alur and V Timmons (Eds). Inclusive education across cultures: Crossing boundaries, Sharing Ideas. Sage: New Delhi.

Singal, N. (2008) Working towards inclusion: Reflections from the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 1516-1529.

Jeffery, R. and Singal, N. (2008) Measuring disability in India. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 43 (12-13), 22-24.

Jeffery, R. and Singal, N. (2008) Disability estimates: implications from a changing landscape of socio-political struggle. Policy Brief No. 3 RECOUP series. http://recoup.educ.cam.ac.uk/publications/policybriefs.html

Singal, N. (2008) Forgotten Youth: Disability and development in India. RECOUP Working Paper 14.

Singal, N. and Jeffery, R. (2008) Qualitative research skills workshop: A facilitator's reference manual. Cambridge: RECOUP. This is an 'open access' work: an Open Educational Resource- based on the philosophy of open-sharing, collaboration and capacity building, it is an attempt to foster a community of qualitative social researchers working in the South.

Singal, N. (2007) Conceptualizing disability and education in the South: Challenges for research. RECOUP Working Paper 10. This working paper has been included by the World Bank in their Disability Knowledge Kit to be shared with other UN and external agencies. The kit is tentatively titled, Inter-Agency Disability Knowledge Base.

Singal, N. (2006) An ecosystemic approach for understanding inclusive education: An Indian case study. European Journal of Psychology of Education, Special issue: Ten years after Salamanca, XXI (3), 239-252.

Singal, N. (2006) Inclusive education in India: International concept, national interpretation. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 53 (3), 351-369. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a755224560

Singal, N. (2005) Mapping the field of inclusive education: A review of the Indian literature. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 9 (4), 331-350.

Alexander, E. et al. (2005) Developing access to skills for life for adults with learning difficulties and/or disabilities. Guidance materials developed as part of the Learning for Living project. UK: DfES and NIACE.

Singal, N. and Rouse, M. (2003) 'We do inclusion': Practitioner perspectives in some 'inclusive schools' in India. Perspectives in Education. Special Issue: The inclusion/exclusion debate in South Africa and developing countries, 21 (3), 85-98.

A summary of this paper was published by id21 and was featured on Education Highlights of id21 in May 2005.

A version of this paper was published as 'Inclusive Education in India: A Lot of Talk But Not Enough Action?'' in the EENET Asia Newsletter, June 2007.