In February and March 2026, the ENGAGE Project hosted two events to share knowledge and spark dialogue around disability, gender, leadership, and activism. These events were anchored by an exhibition, Re-imagining from the South: Girls and Women with Disabilities Advocating for Change, featuring artwork, photovoice, cellphilms, and manifestos created by 54 young women and girls with disabilities from Vietnam, India, and South Africa.

On February 26, the first event foregrounded the voices of the ENGAGE Youth Leadership Circle (YLC) directly. Six youth leaders from South Africa, India, and Vietnam, Andiswa from South Africa, Sweety and Aphuja from India, and Em and Panh from Vietnam, joined the online session to speak about their artworks, their journeys, and their visions for the future. They described forming disability-led clubs, demanding respect in the workplace and community, and using art to make others feel what they feel inside.

Coordinated by Linh Thuy Dang with support from local research assistants, the Youth Leadership Circle spent four months, from November 2025 through February 2026, preparing together across three countries. Youth leaders from Vietnam, India, and South Africa worked collectively to establish objectives, identify their audience, surface key themes from their lived experiences and messages, and carefully choose which artworks would represent their communities. This collaborative process was an act of relational agency, one in which young women and girls with disabilities shaped the terms of their own representation and claimed space as knowledge producers within their communities and across borders.

Andiswa, a youth leader from South Africa highlights:

The second event was hosted as a hybrid gathering at the Participatory Cultures Lab (PCL), McGill University. The panel discussion with the participation of Dr. Xuan Thuy Nguyen (�Ӱ�ԭ�� University), Dr. Claudia Mitchell (McGill University), and Linh Thuy Dang (MA Brock University). Panelists emphasized the importance of centering the voices of girls and young women with disabilities as knowledge producers and leaders in their communities. The discussion also explored how transnational collaboration can support decolonial learning networks and strengthen collective action for social change.

Here are two recordings of the Knowledge Mobilization event series:

Knowledge Mobilization event on February 26, 2026

Knowledge Mobilization event on March 11, 2026

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Re-imagining from the South: Girls and Women with Disabilities Advocating for Change

Date: February 26, 2026

Time: 8:00-10:00AM  EST/ 6:30-8:30PM IST/ 8:00-10:00PM ICT/ 3:00-5:00PM SAST

Register on Eventbrite:

Organiser: Decolonial Disability Studies Collective (�Ӱ�ԭ�� University) and Brock University

Speakers:

• ENGAGE Youth Leadership Circle Leaders
• Dr. Chelsea Jones, Brock University
• Dr. Xuan Thuy Nguyen, �Ӱ�ԭ�� University

Event description:

ENGAGE brings together youth, artists, researchers, and community members from post-colonial contexts in India, South Africa, and Vietnam to share creative knowledge about disability, girlhood, and justice across transnational spaces.

This event highlights a digital exhibition of the leadership journey of young women and girls with disabilities from the Global South, and a coversation with youth leaders and research team. It creates decolonial spaces for cross-community learning that foster leadership and activism with women and girls with disabilities across the Global South.

More information about the ENGAGE project: /ddsc/engage/

The post [Online Event] Re-imagining from the South: Girls and Women with Disabilities Advocating for Change appeared first on Decolonial Disability Studies Collective.

Sambhavna: A Possibility

A Memorial Screening on the 41st Anniversary of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy

Event type: Film Screening and Discussion

Organiser: Yash Gupta (Research Fellow, RTG2686: Contradiction Studies) & The Decolonial Disability Studies Collective (�Ӱ�ԭ�� University)

Guest Speakers: Dr. Satinath Sarangi (Founder, Sambhavana Trust Clinic)

Date & Time: 26^th January, 2026, 8:30 EST/14:30 CEST/19:00 IST/20:30 ICT

Location: Online

Collaborators: RTG2686: Contradiction Studies (University of Bremen); The Decolonial Disability Studies Collective (�Ӱ�ԭ�� University); (Bhopal)

For online attendance, please email: ygupta@uni-bremen.de

What does care look like when harm cannot be undone?

On the night of December 2–3, 1984, a leak from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal released over forty tonnes of methyl isocyanate gas, exposing more than half a million people to one of the deadliest industrial disasters in recorded history. Forty-one years later, the disaster is often remembered as a singular event; yet for survivors, its effects continue to unfold across bodies, families, and environments. To mark the 41st anniversary of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, Sambhavna: A Possibility presents a memorial film screening that revisits not only the night of the leak but its enduring aftermath.

The film offers an entry point into broader conversations about survival, memory, and the politics of care in a chemically saturated world. Moving beyond narratives of catastrophe alone, it foregrounds the everyday labour of endurance: how communities live with ongoing exposure, chronic illness, and institutional abandonment, and how care is reimagined when repair is partial and justice remains deferred.

A post-screening discussion will follow with Dr. Satinath Sarangi, Founder of the Sambhavna Trust Clinic, a community-run organisation in Bhopal that has provided free, long-term care to survivors since 1995. The discussion will be moderated by Yash Gupta, a second-generation survivor of the tragedy, together with the Decolonial Disability Studies Collective (DDSC) at �Ӱ�ԭ�� University. Together, they will reflect on the resonances of the disaster, the limits of institutional accountability, and the forms of solidarity that emerge from lived exposure.

This event is a collaboration between the Decolonial Disability Studies Collective (�Ӱ�ԭ�� University), RTG 2686: Contradiction Studies (University of Bremen), and the Sambhavna Trust Clinic (Bhopal).

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