Comment on Grace et al. (2024). Expanding Possibilities for Inclusive Research: Learning from People with Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities and Decolonising Research. Social Sciences 13: 37

This article is a response to a paper, published last year in this journal, by Grace, Nind, de Haas and Hope. The authors sought to “question how we create knowledge and challenge underlying assumptions about valid forms of knowing” (p. 3). Their focus is on inclusive research with people who have profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMDs). They describe their approach as “being with”, aligned with the experience of meaning, as opposed to doing research with people, which they locate in knowledge extraction. Recognising the authors’ commitment to foregrounding the personhood of people with PIMDs, a critique is developed in order to open a debate around issues of ethical research practices, decolonisation and conceptualisation of ‘deep knowledge’.