Brigitte Rohwerder researches social justice and inclusion, particularly disability inclusion in low-income contexts, using participatory methods.
Her research interests include disability stigma, forced displacement, and marginalised groups’ experiences of conflict, crises and humanitarian response.
Her work at IDS has included the BASIC (Better Social Assistance in Crises) programme, where she worked on a participatory research project looking at marginalised peoples’ experiences around accessing social assistance in crises settings in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and northern Uganda.
As part of the two Inclusive Futures projects, she worked on people with disabilities experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the Disability Inclusive Development programme her focus was also on supporting a participatory research project looking at experiences of children with disabilities of pre-primary education in Kenya, as well as providing situational overviews of disability and disability stigma in several different countries. In the Inclusion Works programme, she worked on people with disabilities experiences of inclusive employment, and co-facilitating participatory methods workshops in Kenya and Uganda.
She did additional work on the effects of the pandemic through PARDAN (focused on adolescents with disabilities in Nepal), the Covid Collective (focused on forcibly displaced persons), and CLEAR (focused on coping strategies and poverty stigma). She has worked for K4DD, K4D and the GSDRC helpdesks on disability inclusion, humanitarian response, conflict, governance, and social development issues, providing support to advisors in a variety of donor agencies. She has also worked with the Humanitarian Learning Centre and a variety of other research projects.
