SPEAKERS
Keynote Speakers
Professor Roger Slee is Emeritus Professor of Disability and Inclusion in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at The University of Leeds. Roger was formerly the Deputy Director General of Education in Queensland, Australia with responsibility for Strategic Policy, Curriculum Reform, and Workforce Development. He has also been a Dean of Education at The University of Western Australia, Goldsmiths College – University of London, and McGill University. He also held the Chair of Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, UCL.
Roger has been engaged as an advisor to governments around the world and wrote the scoping technical paper for UNESCO’s 2020 Global Education Monitoring Report and has been engaged by the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education to advise on inter-governmental policy development in inclusive education. Roger has been appointed as a Senior Adviser for Deloitte Access Economics on state-wide government reviews of education for disabled students (Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales, Northern Territory & Federal Department of Education).
Roger is the Founding Editor of the International Journal of Inclusive Education and the Journal of Disability Studies in Education. He has written and edited numerous books. Roger was the Chair of the Board of Directors of Children & Young People with Disabilities Australia. Recently Roger was awarded an Honorary Doctorate and had a Chair established in his Name at the Bernardo O’Higgins University in Chile. He is currently the Director of an Education Consulting company based in Melbourne Australia.
Mel Ainscow CBE is Emeritus Professor, University of Manchester, Professor of Education, University of Glasgow and Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology. A long-term consultant to UNESCO, he is internationally recognized as an authority on the promotion of inclusion and equity in education. His most recent book is Reforming education systems for inclusion and equity (Routledge, 2025).
Trish Grant is currently the Inclusive Education Lead consultant for IHC- previously Trish held the position of Director of Advocacy at IHC for over 15 years. Prior to that Trish was the Advocacy Manager for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, a role she held for nine years. Her professional background also includes secondary teaching, counselling and social work. Trish is passionate about inclusive education and social justice more generally.
She was instrumental in the settlement of IHC’s litigation against the New Zealand government that alleged that disabled students experienced unlawful discrimination at school due to policy and structural problems within the education system. IHC’s legal case ran over seventeen years. A strategic litigation approach, initiated over the last four years, was key to the settlement of the legal action. The Settlement includes a government agreement to a work programme to resolve the system problems and the establishment of a monitoring group made up of disabled people, families and advocacy groups to oversee the system change process for a period of six years.
Trish is a life member Inclusion International and a member of the Catalyst for Inclusive Education sub-group. Trish has contributed to the national and international discourse on disabled students human right to inclusive education.
Professor Sulochini Pather is Professor of Education at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), having previously served as Full Professor at Leeds Trinity University in the UK and Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. She is President of the South Africa Educational Research Association (SAERA) and Chair of the SADC CSTL Research forum. She was formerly the Director for Inclusive Education in the Department of Education in South Africa and has over 30 years experience in the field of Inclusive Education, working with local and international agencies, ministries of education and relevant stakeholders cross countries in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. She has worked on several Inclusive Education projects in the UK and across a range of developing contexts.
She is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Inclusive Education and Journal of Disability Studies in Education. Her research expertise lies in disability studies, inclusive education and the inclusion and exclusion of marginalised groups of learners, including children with disabilities and special needs, from minority ethnic groups and migrant communities.
XL Millennium has been appointed as conference organisers for Rethinking (Inclusive) Education for Challenging Times conference. Communication regarding the symposium may come directly from the company.
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