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Board Elections 2024-2025

Members can VOTE HERE at our Patreon

Treasurer

Peter Greenland (he/him/his)

Image Description: A dark-skinned man with shoulder-length hair in small braids is seated at a table; he smiles at the camera. There is a dessert with a candle on the table in front of him, and through a window behind him, a city can be seen from high up.
Image Description: A dark-skinned man with shoulder-length hair in small braids is seated at a table; he smiles at the camera. There is a dessert with a candle on the table in front of him, and through a window behind him, a city can be seen from high up.

Experience with Critical Disability Studies, Disability Activism, Disability Justice, lived disability experience, and/or leadership within the disability community: I currently oversee a homeless shelter that serves single men with fragile medical condition and also are living with some form of disability. 

 

Experience/Involvement in nonprofit leadership: I have had 4.5 years of working with a non-profit organization in a leadership role.

 

Hopes to achieve/wants members to know: I hope to obtain a well-rounded level of experience in the role and to learn as much as I can from this experience.

Graduate Student Representative

Luda Gogolushko, PhD Candidate (she/her/hers)

Image Description: a woman in a wheelchair smiling at the camera.
Image Description: a woman in a wheelchair smiling at the camera.

Experience with Critical Disability Studies, Disability Activism, Disability Justice, lived disability experience, and/or leadership within the disability community: As someone who has used a wheelchair since I was a child, I have found the need to constantly advocate for disability inclusion. Over the years, I have served of 3 DEI committees (collegiate recreation – international level, book publishing – national level, & School of Journalism & Communication – Oregon), conducted numerous disability etiquette trainings, and secured funding for an accessible ropes course at my last college. I launched a press in 2015 dedicated to supporting disabled authors and featuring disabled fictional characters. Currently, my research in media and children’s studies is centered on disability representation.

 

Experience/Involvement in nonprofit leadership: Having been part of the Muscular Dystrophy Association as a child through my adult years, I regularly volunteered, thanked donors, and provided feedback on events. I have also conduced conference audits that focused on disability accessibility and inclusion. I have served as a board member for a non-profit that aimed to bring the conversation and representation of diverse YA books and authors to readers and social media creators. I was a development intern at the GRAMMY Museum where I learned about donor relations and the operations of different programs, and am currently in a Nonprofit Management Certificate program.

 

Hopes to achieve/wants members to know: I believe that we’re in an interesting place where disability is starting to be discussed (e.g., IAMCR PwD working group) and SDS can help shape the academic disability field during these changing times. This could include exploring different avenues of expansion (e.g., subdivisions of the journal, collaborating with other national and international conferences who are thinking of exploring disability (e.g., International Communication Association), grants/support for inclusive research designs or disabled scholars). I believe in taking innovative steps to prepare for the changing times and being a leader in supporting disabled scholars, research, and organizations.

Member-At-Large

Amanda Cachia, Assistant Professor of Arts Leadership (she/her/hers)

Image Description: A light-skinned woman with long curly hair stands outdoors, smiling broadly.
Image Description: A light-skinned woman with long curly hair stands outdoors, smiling broadly.

Experience with Critical Disability Studies, Disability Activism, Disability Justice, lived disability experience, and/or leadership within the disability community: I am a disabled curator, art historian, critic and activist. My PhD in Art History, Theory & Criticism at UCSD was focused on the intersection of art history and disability studies. My first monograph, The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art and Institutional Critique will be published by Temple University Press in Fall 2024. I have just finished writing my second book, Hospital Aesthetics: Rescripting Medical Images of Disability, which is currently under review and which received the 2023 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. I have written many peer-reviewed journal articles and essays in edited volumes focused on the intersection between contemporary art, curatorial studies and disability studies. As a person with a rare form of dwarfism (brachyolmia) I have a valuable lived experience of disability to contribute to the SDS board.

 

Experience/Involvement in nonprofit leadership: I have worked as a Gallery Director/Curator of non-profit art galleries for 10+ years, including work as an independent curator. I have worked with gallery and library boards and committees. I have organized and chaired many panel discussions and conferences, particularly through UCSD, the College Art Association, and University of Houston.

 

Hopes to achieve/wants members to know: I hope to offer my voice as a disabled arts leader and curator in the field of disability studies. I am committed to supporting scholars, artists, and activists motivated by the diversity of disability experiences. I am also committed to incorporating perspectives from around the world, from different professional trajectories, and across the life course. I would like to help SDS rethink how the organization can meet the diverse needs of its constituencies and provide a wide variety of forms of engagement across modalities and institutional forms, particularly disabled artists.

Ioana Cerasella Chis (she/her/hers)

A light-skinned woman with long, straight, bright red hair stands outdoors, smiling at the camera. She wears glasses and a striped top.
A light-skinned woman with long, straight, bright red hair stands outdoors, smiling at the camera. She wears glasses and a striped top.

Experience with Critical Disability Studies, Disability Activism, Disability Justice, lived disability experience, and/or leadership within the disability community: I am a UK-based early career disabled/neurodivergent scholar. My thesis, titled ‘The Politics of Disablement and Precarious Work: Prefiguring a Non-Productivist Future’ intervenes in Disability Studies, Political Economy, and social science disciplines by highlighting the relationship between structural disablement and the total, coercive institution of work. Organising-wise, I created a disability officer role within my trade union branch a year ago, and have held and developed the role since – influencing my university employer’s policies and practices that affect disabled colleagues. Leadership-wise, I have been a Steering Group Member for the Marxism & Disability Network over the past two years.

 

Experience/Involvement in nonprofit leadership: Since 2016, I have been an active organiser and committee member of two trade union branches at my university – UNISON (union of cleaning, catering, administrative, and other support staff) and UCU (union of academic and academic-related staff) as Chair, membership officer, anti-casualisation officer, and disabled members’ officer. Academically, I co-founded and co-run (2015-2019) a Research Group (Contemporary Philosophy of Technology Research Group) at the University of Birmingham, and I am currently a co-convenor of BSA (British Sociological Association) Theory Study Group. I have (co-)organised and hosted dozens of seminars, as well as several Symposia and conferences.

 

Hopes to achieve/wants members to know: As someone who is interested in activist scholarship and interdisciplinary research, I would like to propose, explore, and implement, together with the rest of the SDS Board, ideas that involve reaching organisations and individuals who have not yet engaged with and/or come across, SDS and (Critical) Disability Studies. I would also be keen to support other colleagues’ initiatives and to ensure (as much as it is possible) that our plans for the near future are sustainable. Communications and Awards/Nominations would also be areas of interest, in terms of committees that I would be happy to join. Finally, I would look forward to learning from my colleagues (not least as someone who has only just recently finished their PhD).

Siobhán Cully, Associate Professor (she/her/hers)

Image Description: A middle-age white woman with brown puffy coat smiling with smoldering volcano in the background.
Image Description: A middle-age white woman with brown puffy coat smiling with smoldering volcano in the background.

Experience with Critical Disability Studies, Disability Activism, Disability Justice, lived disability experience, and/or leadership within the disability community: I have developing expertise in disability studies, including four-field anthropological approaches to disability. I tweet frequently on topics related to DisabilityInSTEM and offer my service as someone with a more scientific orientation who embraces pluralism and the need for weaving multiple ways of knowledge for representative understandings. I have a disability, which guides some of my interests in this field and in bringing disability justice and studies to broader areas of scholarship with traditionally more limited engagement. I dedicated much of my career as an erstwhile government administrator (NSF) to broadening participation efforts, with a special emphasis on disability. In sum, I have significant engagement with disability and growing expertise in the field, as well as disability expertise garnered from my own experiences as a disabled scientist.

 

Experience/Involvement in nonprofit leadership: I have served as a member of the board of the Evolutionary Anthropology Society (elected position) and as a judge for student submissions for the Human Biology Association. I have organized numerous workshops, including an upcoming government-sponsored workshop on disability in STEM. I was an NSF program officer for four years, where I also co-led the internal working group on persons with disabilities.

 

 

Hopes to achieve/wants members to know: I am interested in multi-directional conversations and convergences between scholarly areas that identify as focused on disability and ones that have more often peripheralized disability. As part of this, I hope to rebuild a focus area for bio-cultural anthropology that centers disability as a fundamental axis of human variation. Being part of the Disability Studies board would enhance my understanding of this space, benefitting me and my colleagues in bio-cultural anthropology, while serving the SDS in ways that build on extensive administrative (including grant writing) expertise.

Jason B. Dorwart, Assistant Professor of Global Theatre Studies (he/him/his)

Image Description: A light-skinned man in a wheelchair wearing glasses and a black sweater over a pale blue button-down shirt.
Image Description: A light-skinned man in a wheelchair wearing glasses and a black sweater over a pale blue button-down shirt.

Experience with Critical Disability Studies, Disability Activism, Disability Justice, lived disability experience, and/or leadership within the disability community: I am a quadriplegic wheelchair user who has been involved in disability theatre, accessibility non-profits, and activism. My monograph theorizes the historical difficulties of actors with disabilities. I also teach Critical Disability Studies college courses.

 


Experience/Involvement in nonprofit leadership: I served as Vice President of the Board of Directors for Phamaly Theatre Co., I previously worked as PR/Comunications Director for Home Builders Foundation (an accessibility non-profit)

 


Hopes to achieve/wants members to know: I hope to encourage international involvement in SDS and to work toward DSQ attaining a Scopus listing.

Dr. Cinzia Greco, Research Fellow (she/her/hers)

A pale woman with long brown hair stares pensively down and slightly away from the camera. She wears a black top.
A pale woman with long brown hair stares pensively down and slightly away from the camera. She wears a black top.

Experience with Critical Disability Studies, Disability Activism, Disability Justice, lived disability experience, and/or leadership within the disability community: I am a medical anthropologist, and I have conducted for several years research with patients, medical professionals and patients’ relatives on the disabling consequences of cancer. I have more recently been working on the consequences and experiences of other conditions (Long Covid, Fibromyalgia and myalgic encephalomyelitis) and on autism and neurodiversity more generally. I am also a late-diagnosed autistic woman. I am on the steering committee of Autism@Manchester, a network that links researchers, practitioners and experts by experience, and I have been involved in the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion experience of my institution, in particular in relation to disability.

 

Experience/Involvement in nonprofit leadership: In addition to my activities with Autism@Manchester and the EDI of the University of Manchester, I have co-founded ‘Remaking Cancer’, an international network for researchers working on cancer in humanities and social science. I have organised two international workshops for Remaking Cancer and other workshops and panels at conferences. I am the co-editor-in-chief of Anthropologie & Santé, the leading francophone journal for medical anthropology, and I have been involved in public engagement and art-based initiatives, including ‘Feel(in) the Gap’, an art project and exhibition on invisible disabilities.

 

Hopes to achieve/wants members to know: Through my involvement in the SDS Board, I would like to continue the vital work that the association does through its various initiatives and its academic journal. Through my position as a woman living with a disability and professional activity as a researcher interested in illness and disability, I intend to strengthen the international dimension of the association’s work and the links with initiatives and debates that have a place in Europe. I am currently based in the UK and collaborate with French, Italian and Belgian institutions and colleagues. I have also conducted research in several European countries.

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