The Inclusive Education Series: A Conversation with Valentina Migliarini

What do inclusive education, intersectionality, the Global South, Italian anti-fascism, and almost dying on a Greek island have in common?

Apparently, one episode of DiveIn. 🎙️

In the fourth episode of our Inclusive Education Series, I sit down with my friend and colleague Valentina Migliarini, Associate Professor in Education Studies at the University of Birmingham, whose work examines inclusive education at the intersections of disability, race, migration, language, and social justice.

Valentina offers an unapologetically critical perspective on inclusive education. Drawing from her experiences growing up in Italy and her research across different international contexts, she argues that authentic inclusion requires much more than simply placing students with disabilities in general education classrooms. It requires us to rethink the structures, assumptions, and power relations that determine who belongs—and who gets pushed to the margins.

And I push her on some of those arguments.

Does full inclusion really have enough empirical evidence? What about students for whom inclusion appears not to work? And what exactly counts as “evidence” in the first place?

Oh, and about that Greek island...

Before discussing any of this, I finally tell the story of the night Valentina almost killed me.

It involves two very confident Italian women, a nearly empty gas tank, a rental car with an engine warning light, a getting lost in a Greek mountain in the middle of the night.

Valentina maintains that everything was under control.

I have a somewhat different interpretation of the evidence.

Perhaps this is why we ended up debating epistemology.

🎧 A provocative, international, occasionally argumentative—and potentially life-threatening—conversation about what inclusive education could and should become.

Are you ready?

Let’s DiveIn.

Transcript

email me at federico.waitoller@outlook.com