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Prof Oliver Mutanga, a University of the Free State (UFS) alumnus with a PhD in Development Studies and an experienced researcher focused on matters pertaining to disability, education, equality, and health issues, recently took up the position of Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Prof Melanie Walker, Director of the SARChI Chair in Higher Education and HumanDevelopment (HEHD) at the UFS, invited Prof Mutanga to discuss his own research via an open webinar and to engage with members of her research group.

Prof Walker explained that she was delighted to host Dr Mutanga at the university, given his profile as an outstanding and internationally mobile early career researcher, from whom others in her group could learn. “Further, I very much wanted Dr Mutanga to speak about his own research, given its overall academic excellence, quality, and impact. Going forward, I am looking forward to developing this link with Dr Mutanga and his colleagues abroad around critical diversity studies,” she states.

Profs Walker and Mutanga have collaborated in the past to write articles for academic journals arising from his doctoral research. Examples include, ‘Towards a disability-inclusive higher education policy through the capabilities approach’ (published in the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities) as well as ‘Exploration of the academic lives of students with disabilities at South African universities: Lecturers’ perspectives’ (published in the African Journal of Disability).

Prior to joining Nazarbayev University, Prof Mutanga gained valuable research and development experience in various countries, including Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, Norway, and the United Kingdom.

He has also received several accolades for his work, including the prestigious Marie Sklodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Oslo, Norway, and the Global Challenges Research Fellowship at University College London's Institute of Education.

A unique outlook on disability

In 2013, Prof Mutanga was part of the first cohort of PhD students under the SARChI Chair in Higher Education and Human Development. Recently, during his three-day visit to the UFS, he addressed the HEHD research group and an international academic audience during a hybrid seminar on the perceptions and experiences of disability within the Tembo Mvura communities of Northern Zimbabwe.

In his research for this paper, Prof Mutanga uses storytelling and in-depth interviews to offer a distinctive, community-based, and Southern interpretation of disability. By applying the capabilities approach and the ubuntu philosophy, his study presents a contrast to Western perceptions of disability that often emphasise individual limitations and differences based on physical and mental characteristics, which have the potential to both result in isolation and to understanding people as autonomous but isolated beings.

Within the Tembo Mvura communities, he discovered that disability is viewed through a lens of interconnectedness between individuals, their environment, and the spiritual world: “They recognise the inherent worth and dignity of all individuals, irrespective of their impairments,” found Prof Mutanga. Indeed, impairment of full personhood is understood as lacking in any of the three dimensions outlined above.

Thus, Prof Mutanga explored the complex interaction of identity, access to land, laws, and language, as well as labelling, highlighting how these factors shape perceptions and experiences of disability within these communities.

He is of the view that these findings will have implications for North-dominated disability discourse and for policy, practice, and research within indigenous contexts, such as the Tembo Mvura, where disability is uniquely perceived and experienced.

In addition to the hybrid seminar, Prof Mutanga led valuable sessions with the HEHD Research Group, where the PhD and postdoctoral fellows had the opportunity to workshop and refine various aspects of their current research papers and to engage in discussions around building their academic careers.