About
Dr Sarah Lewthwaite is a Senior Research Fellow within Southampton Education School at the University of Southampton. She is now based in the Centre for Research in Inclusion where she leads the “Teaching Accessibility in the Digital Skill Set” study as Principal Investigator, and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow (2019-2023).
Sarah affiliations include:
- Honorary Fellow of the Learning Sciences Research Institute
- Member of the Society for Disability Studies
- Member of Wikimedia UK
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)
- Member of W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, Education and Outreach Working Group: Curricula Task Force
- Member of the Society for Research in Higher Education
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Higher Education
- Critical Disability Studies
- Digital Accessibility
- Pedagogy
- Social Media Research
Current research
Sarah’s research expertise and interests centre on the teaching and learning of accessibility in academia and the workplace. She also maintains a keen interest in inclusion, disability and new media research, inclusive and accessible research methods and student experience. Sarah is Principal Investigator leading Teaching Accessibility in the Digital Skill Set.
Research projects
Active projects
Completed projects
Publications
Teaching
Sarah teachs advanced qualitative research methods, and pedagogy development with the National Centre for Research Methods.
External roles and responsibilities
Biography
Sarah first joined the School of Education as a Research Fellow at the National Centre for Research Methods.
Prior to academia, Sarah has worked supporting disabled students’ access to education and technology in both secondary and higher education, and the public sector. She holds an MA in Research Methods (Distinction) and a PhD from the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham. During her doctoral studies, Sarah investigated how networked publics such as Facebook create and alter experiences of disability using advanced accessible, digital research methods.
Following her PhD, Sarah has worked as a researcher on the MyUI Project, an EC project developing interactive design for older users; and as a post-doctoral research associate in student experience at King’s College London.