Exclusion through Attempted Inclusion: Research Experiences with Disabled Persons’ Organisations (DPOs) in Western Zambia

Partnership with disabled persons’ organisations (DPOs) is often presented as one mechanism to ensure the inclusion of persons with disabilities in research that concerns them. In working with two DPOs in Western Zambia, we learned that one of these groups was organised in a way that differed from our own presumptions and the descriptions of DPOs in literature: the group was fluid in membership and willing to re-formulate itself according to the priorities of visitors. From this we understand that limiting research partnerships to DPOs, as typically described, could lead to the inadvertent exclusion of people involved in many different forms of organising by persons with disabilities.