Emerging Disability Research 8:55 am-5:15 pm, Wednesday April 8 (Virtual)

8:55-9:00 am: Opening Remarks

9:00-9:20 am: Autistic and/or ADHD cisgender women, non-binary feminised people, and trans women in Ireland (40-60 years): Identity, Social Relations, and Employment experiences

Alexa MacDermot

I am an autistic PhD candidate researching members of my own cohort in University College Dublin, Ireland. I am using Life History Interviews and Self-Interview with Photoelicitation as my methodologies, and centering my theoretical approach through Critical Autism Studies, Gender and Intersectionality. My cohort are 40-60 years old in order to capture the lived experiences of midlife feminised people who may recently identify as neurodivergent.

9:25-9:45 am: Sensory Democracy: Flourishing as Ongoingness in Somatic-Based Neurodiversity Discourse

Yunjo Lee

Democratic life is shaped as much by bodies and senses as by speech and law, yet neurodivergent forms of sensing and knowing often remain invisible within public narratives and institutional legacies. This research introduces Sensory Democracy as an artistic, philosophical, and somatic framework for democratic relationality and flourishing through neurodiverse and embodied practices. It proposes that democracy must move beyond rational-linguistic models to embrace a wider, if not full, spectrum of human sensory and cognitive difference. 

10-10:45 am: Disability Justice and Digital Legacy: Community Archives of Self-Determination (Panel)

Karen Hayes; Jess Petrazzuoli-Gallagher ; Ashten Vassar-Cain ; Dr. James W. Conroy

The Pennhurst Memorial & Preservation Alliance Community Archives is uplifting untold stories. By digitizing materials from Speaking For Ourselves—one of America’s first self-advocacy organizations run by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities—we center formerly institutionalized activists’ voices and create pathways to knowledge previously confined to physical archives. Through our panel, we explore how community archiving challenges oppressive narratives and combats erasure, ensuring activist knowledge remains visible and accessible for future generations. 

10:45-11:15 am: Q&A/Discussion

Moderator: Amana Dultra 

11:55 am-12 pm: Opening Remarks

12-12:20 pm:  Beyond Blind Design: Scaling Access to Architecture for Students with Disability

Andrew Gipe-Lazarou

This presentation will elaborate on the methods and aims of Virginia Tech’s annual Blind Design Workshop, a week-long architectural learning initiative, organized in collaboration with the state’s vocational rehabilitation agency, for aspiring designers with vision-impairment. It will focus, in particular, on the strategies which have been paramount to the Workshop’s longevity and success, including sustainable partnerships, federal funding, student-led instruction, and emerging learning technologies.

12:25-12:45 pm: Doing More, Better: Disability as a Catalyst for Change in CSD

Leslie Crusco Grubler Ed.D., CCC-SLP

There is limited research on ableism in health and allied health disciplines, including communication sciences and disorders (CSD). Ableism often emerges implicitly, shaping education, supervision, and career trajectories. This descriptive phenomenological study explored retrospective experiences to examine cultures of inclusion in CSD. As the first study of its kind, it illuminates barriers faced by students and professionals with disabilities and underscores the need for disability-affirmative academic and clinical environments, clearer ADA accommodation processes, and disability-affirmative training.

1:00-1:20 pm: Beyond the Ideal Scientist: Nonlinear Scholarship and AI-Supported Access

Nadia Ahmad

This autoethnographic study examines how concussion recovery, caregiving, and full-time teaching shaped my nonlinear dissertation journey. Drawing on field notes, medical documentation, and correspondence logs, I develop a Nonlinear Scholarship framework built on five principles: pacing, redundancy, multimodality, transparency, and reciprocity. I argue that AI tools function as cognitive accessibility infrastructure and offer practical guidelines for integrating AI ethically to support scholars navigating disability and caregiving.

1:25-1:45 pm: (Dis)trust in Precision Medicine Research: Increasing Disability Visibility and Inclusion in Health Research

Presenters: Katharine Peglow and Maya Sabatello

All authors: Kate Peglow, Howard Rosenblum, Magdalena Eitenberger, Alejandra Aguirre, and Maya Sabatello (corresponding author)

Including adults with disabilities in precision medicine research (PMR) has clinical, public, and social justifications, but this population is underrepresented in such studies and likely to have concerns that affect their participation. Building off a community-engaged study, we share findings from 21 focus groups with adults with disabilities (n=117) that explored views on PMR, identifying key sources of distrust in PMR, and proposing steps to facilitate equitable participation of this population in health research.

1:45-2:15 pm: Q&A/Discussion

Moderator: Kenya Loudd

2:55-3:00 pm: Opening Remarks

3-3:45 pm: Artivism from Bedspace/ Artivismo desde el espacio-cama (Panel)

Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum, Manu Vargas Fernández, Nyx Mir, Aurora Pearson, Liliana Macías, and Elisabeth Parsons

According to Sins Invalid, bedspace is a place where people can live, write, read, make protest signs, cuddle, work, dance, sleep, dream, organize, and run the world all from our beds. This virtual panel invites attendees to join from bedspace to understand and experience artivism created in crip spacetime by and/or for people living in bedspace.

4-4:45 pm: “Call and Response”: A Crip Dance and Poetry Workshop

Krista K. Miranda and Cynthia Ling Lee

Our virtual workshop emerges from “Call and Response,” an interdisciplinary project that explores crip/chronically ill embodiment and access aesthetics through improvisational dance, poetry, and music. We will guide you through our movement scores and give you a taste of our creative process: witnessing each other dance will lead to collaborative creative writing that bridges poetry with principles of audio description. Participants should wear comfortable clothing and be in a space where they can move.

4:45-5:15 pm: Q&A/Discussion

Moderator: Kaliane Ung