Ms Micheline Mason, Speaker and consultant on inclusive education and disability equality, UK

Micheline Mason is a Special School Survivor who left Art College in 1972 in order to become an activist within the Disability Movement. Together with many others she helped develop the analysis of the social v medical models of disability which underpin Disability Equality Training. When she became a parent of a disabled child in 1984 she concentrated on tailoring these insights to the education system.  In 1990 she was a co-founder of the Alliance for Inclusive Education and, as Director of the organisation for fifteen years, helped support many families, teachers and other professionals to work towards educational change, as well as campaigning, with some success, to change the legal frame work within which families were struggling for justice. She is the co-author of Disability Equality in the Classroom- a Human Rights Issue, and Incurably Human some of the only texts about inclusive education from the perspective of disabled people.  Recently she has become a free lance trainer and consultant.

Ms Mimi Lusli, Helen Keller International, Indonesia

Mimi Lusli works for Helen Keller International, facilitating training for education professionals in Inclusive Education in Indonesia.  She works with teachers and education administrators in mainstream schools, as well as providing support to teachers working specifically with disabled children. Mimi has been working in the field for 17 years, gaining wide experience through working as an adviser for Disabled People’s Organisations, as well as teaching and lecturing in the Education Department of Atma Jaya University, Jakarta and working as a counsellor in schools in Jakarta. Mimi qualified with a degree in Curriculum and Educational Technology from Sanata Darma University in Yogyakarta (Central Java). She has subsequently gained a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Indonesia and an MA in International Communications from Leeds University, UK, holding a Chevening Scholarship. Mimi has published two books, exploring the learning of Braille and communication with blind people and is a member of the advisory board for the Disability Studies Centre at the University of Indonesia.

Ms Susie Miles, University of Manchester, UK

Susie Miles is the Course Director of the MEd in Inclusive Education in the University of Manchester’s School of Education. She was the founding Coordinator of the Enabling Education Network (EENET) from 1997. She worked in southern and East Africa for 12 years, from 1983-1994. In Swaziland she taught in the school for deaf children and than set up nationwide Speech and Hearing Clinic Services for the Ministry of Health. She then took up the post of Regional Disability Adviser with Save the Children UK, which involved supporting the development of CBR and integrated education (as it was then known) in South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania. Throughout this time, she worked closely with the Southern Africa Federation of Disabled people, as well as parents’ organisations which were in the early stages of development in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe.