Society for Disability Studies

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Michele Friedner is a PhD student in Medical Anthropology in the University of Caljfornia, Berkeley- University of California San Francisco Joint Medical Anthropology program. Michele studies the myriad ways that deaf young adults living in Bangalore negotiate kinship and belonging across family, caste, gender, religion, and caste. She is especially interested in the constitutive roles that vocational programs and corporate social responsibility initiatives play in this negotiation and her work is attentive to what she calls "global deafness" or the ways that specific discourses around deafness can be hegemonic and uni-directional. Michele has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the UC Regents, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the UC Regents to conduct her research. Prior to starting graduate school, Michele worked within the field of disability advocacy as an Outreach Coordinator at Disability Rights Advocates and as a program manager and social service provider at Toolworks, Inc, both in the San Francisco bay area. Michele is excited about expanding the international scope of SDS and bringing international perspectives to its conferences.