PhD Scholarship Success - welcoming Hannah Gawne as PhD candidate

About the Project

Welcoming Hannah Gawne as the first of our successful 2023 PhD Scholarship applicants!

Hannah has been a research assistant and ambassador of The Hopkins Centre for a number of years. As a person with disability, Hannah has often participated in a number of THC research projects including the Singing Cords project and the TMR project evaluating inclusivity in public transport. 

For her PhD research, Hannah will be investigating social access and inclusion for people with disability in built environments. 

Thesis title: Social access and inclusion outcomes for people with a disability in leisure and recreational built environments within a major Australian city

Summary of project: The proposed study aims to understand social access for people with a disability (PwD) within an urban environment. To accomplish this, a literature review will be completed to identify the role of barriers and enablers for PwD in community inclusion within a social setting. The subsequent PhD will then explore the barriers and enablers of a contemporary urban environment from the perspectives of PwD, investigating individuals’ experiences and collecting data from various known social settings. Collectively, the data will be applied to legislation surrounding disability access within Australia to determine whether policies are adhering to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2006). This knowledge will then be used to determine policy outcomes.