At the age of 5, Dr. Anjali Forber-Pratt witnessed wheelchair racing at the Boston Marathon, prompting her to dress up as the winner for Halloween that year. As a young child, “It was a powerful moment in terms of seeing role models and adults who had disabilities who were achieving great things,” she said.
Advocating for disability rights has been something Forber-Pratt has done since she was 7. It eventually led the Natick, Ma. native to compete on the wheelchair track and field team at the collegiate level at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing and the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London.
The advice of mentors, combined with her passion for social justice and disability studies, compelled Forber-Pratt to pursue graduate studies in the field of speech language pathology and human resource education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, nearly a decade ago.
“I purposely wanted my degree and my career path to actually be outside of disability,” she said. “I didn’t want to be pigeonholed into a career related to disability just because I had a disability.”
Today, Forber-Pratt is in her third year on faculty in the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. She said that the Human and Organizational Development department is “a perfect fit” since she is able to holistically and inclusively examine disability through the lens of social justice.
A well-rounded researcher relying on her psychological and educational training, Forber-Pratt’s current scholarship focuses on disability identity development, perceptions of inclusion and disability and victimization experiences in schools. She examines how a coherent disability identity helps individuals adapt to disability, including navigating social stresses and daily hassles such as ableism, inaccessibility and discrimination.
Because disability occurs across cultures and can occur across a lifespan, Forber-Pratt seeks to design enhanced interventions and support mechanisms to better support individuals who might be newly diagnosed with a disability. Some of her work also explores how other people’s perceptions can change about people with disabilities through their involvement with sports.
