This book offers a critical and systematic analysis of how universities navigate inclusion while grappling with entrenched traditions of exclusivity. Drawing on power theory, poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives, ableism criticism, and the concept of epistemic injustice, the book explores the tensions and contradictions that arise when participatory teaching formats seek to integrate marginalised voices into academic spaces, particularly those of people with learning disabilities.

Anchored in empirical insights from the FriLeFT project (formerly QuaBIS), this agile monograph is the expanded and revised English edition of Reflexion Partizipativer Lehre im Kontext inklusiver Hochschulentwicklung: Macht- und ableismuskritische Perspektiven, enriched with a new international perspective. It traces the emergence of participatory teaching within broader movements for inclusive higher education and examines how universities, despite commitments to diversity, continue to reproduce meritocratic, ableist, and exclusionary norms. Engaging with international debates on academic ableism, cultures of silence, representation, subalternity, and knowledge production, the book explores how participatory teaching can simultaneously create opportunities for empowerment while reproducing existing power relations. Intended for scholars and practitioners in higher education studies, inclusive education, disability studies, critical pedagogy, social work, adult education, sociology of education, sociology of knowledge, and teacher education, this book problematises participatory teaching as a site for critical reflection, institutional transformation, and the ongoing “unlearning” of ableist assumptions and hierarchies.

Nico Leonhardt is Research Associate at the Institute for Special Education at the University of Leipzig, Germany. His research focuses on inclusive school development and social space orientation, inclusion-sensitive university development, participatory research and teaching, ableism, educational equity, and artificial intelligence.