Paralympian Dr Danielle Peers announced as keynote speaker at VISTA 2025

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has announced Dr Danielle Peers as the fourth featured speaker at VISTA 2025, the IPC’s scientific conference dedicated to advancing research and innovation in Para sport. The event will take place in Cairo, Egypt, from 7–10 December 2025, bringing together leading experts, researchers, and practitioners from around the world. 

This year’s VISTA 2025 conference theme is “Developing Para Sport: Inclusion, Transformation, Health and Performance.” Dr Peers’s keynote address will explore the topic "Empowering Paralympic Movements: from aspiration to impact". 

Dr Danielle Peers is a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Disability and Movement Cultures, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta, and the university’s Academic Lead for Disability, Cultures and Access. Their groundbreaking work explores how movement cultures, including sport, art, and recreation, can be used to challenge and transform community values, politics, and inequities. 

Peers draws from their lived experience as a Paralympic bronze medallist in wheelchair basketball, coach, and administrator. They co-lead The Recreation Collective, the Just Movements CreateSpace, and serve as Co-Principal Investigator on iSMART’s USD24 million NFRF project, which focuses on developing transformational health technologies through participatory, justice-based processes. 

Dr Peers said: “Those of us who are passionate about the Paralympics tend to emphasise its capacity to empower not only its athletes but also persons with disabilities in general. However, numerous athletes and activists have suggested that we often don't live up to those claims. 

“This presentation draws on disability justice and critical disability insights, as well as recent research on Paralympic legacies to ask: what – specifically - can each of us do to help make that aspiration of empowerment a lived and experienced reality for a broad range of persons with disabilities worldwide.  

“This  talk is aimed at a range of actors in the Paralympic Movement, including Paralympians, activists and advocates, coaches, administrators, scholars, and event organisers who want to reflexively and creatively consider how the Paralympics can become an engine for increasing the opportunity and influence of those experiencing disabilities.” 

Dr Peers’s inclusion in the VISTA 2025 speaker lineup reflects their global impact on disability justice, inclusive movement practices, and transformative community engagement. 

VISTA 2025  is the eleventh edition of the IPC’s scientific conference and serves as a unique platform for the exchange of cutting-edge research, cross-disciplinary dialogue, and strategic collaboration. It will feature keynote presentations, symposia, oral and poster sessions, and will host the prestigious IPC Scientific Award ceremony. The conference brings together experts from diverse fields — including sports science, medicine, technology, sociology, policy, education, and ethics and integrity — to collectively shape the future of Para sport.  

Registration for VISTA 2025 is now open. Register now.