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Dr. Pau Abustan (they/sia) – California State University, Los Angeles
Keynote Speaker, 2022 UnConference of the Disability Studies and Action Collaborative
Presentation title, “Comfy, Cozy, Community Centered Learning: A Queer, Crip, Philipinx Led Disability Justice Praxis” (October 2022)
Dr. Pau Abustan is queer crip Lucbanin Kapampangan Pilipinx scholar activist educator who centers queer critical race feminist disability justice worldmaking found within youth learning spaces, popular culture animated storytelling, and coalitional activisms.
Dr. Sami Schalk — University of Wisconsin, Madison
Keynote Speaker, Scholars Week 2023
Presentation title, “Introduction to Disability Justice and Accessible Pedagogy” (May 2023)
Dr. Sami Schalk is an associated professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Bodyminds Remagined (Duke 2018) and Black Disability Politics (Duke 2022). Schalk’s research focuses on disability, race, & gender in contemporary American literature & culture. She identifies as a fat Black queer disabled femme & a pleasure activist.
This presentation was co-sponsored by the departments of English, Health and Human Development, Journalism, Philosophy, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, History, and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program.
Stefanie Lyn Kaufman Mthimkhulu (they/she) — Project LETS
Keynote Speaker, Scholars Week 2024
Presentation title, “No Incompletes In ‘Real Life’”: Surviving and Reimagining Ableist Institutions in Mad Times While Centering the Medicine of Disability Justice” (May 2024)
Stefanie Lyn Kaufman Mthimkhulu is the Founder and Director of Project LETS. As a multiply Disabled, Mad, psychiatric survivor, they are deeply committed to interrupting patterns of historical and present-day ableism that impact Disabled people and those perceived as/labeled with mental illness in medical, psychiatric, and academic systems. They have over a decade of experience as an anti-carceral crisis responder, care worker, perinatal doula, death worker, and peer supporter; and have supported multiply marginalized folks in a wide range of psychiatric and medical crises/transitions in community-based settings. They are the author of We Don’t Need Cops in Social Work and the Editor of Abolition Must Include Psychiatry.
Heather Evans (she/her) — University of Washington
Keynote Speaker, 2024 UnConference of the Disability Studies and Action Collaborative
Presentation Title, “Leaning Into & On Disability Community“
Dr. Evans will draw on findings from her research on disability identity and disclosure to examine the ways that her relationship to disability community has both shaped – and been impacted by – her disclosure decisions when on the job market, while piecing together work as an adjunct, and in managing her position as the Director of a program at a large, research university.
Heather Evans earned a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Washington (UW). She is UW faculty and the Director of the Disability Studies Program. Heather is also the Research Director at the NW ADA Center and an Associate Director at the ADA National Network.