Staff and Centre Leadership
Interim Director: Dr. Aparna Nair
Director (on leave): Dr. Cassandra Hartblay
Centre Coordinator: Keegan Hobson
2023-2024 Graduate Student Research Assistant Fellows: Aparna Raghu Menon & Adrianna Michell
2022-2023 Grant Committee Co-Chairs: Walter Villaneuva (Grant Committee Graduate Student RA), T.L Cowan & Hilary Brown
2023-2024 Faculty Steering Committee: Susan Antebi, Anne McGuire, Katherine Schapp Williams, Zoe Wool, Aparna Nair
Previous Staff and Centre Leadership
Interim Director: Hilary Brown (Jan – July 2023)
Program Coordinator: Celeste Pang (Jan-May 2023)
Program Coordinator: Deanna D’Souza (May 2023 – June 2024)
Graduate Student Research Assistant Fellows: Elaine Cagulada & Celeste Pang (2020-2021), Elaine Cagulada & Efrat Gold (2021-2022), Miggy Esteban & Vanessa Maloney (2022-2023)
Grant Committee Co-Chairs: Chloë G. K. Atkins & Zoë Wool (2021-2022), David Pettinucchio & Lesley Tarasoff (2022-2023)
Faculty Steering Committee Members: Tanya Titchkosky
CGDS Members
CGDS members include faculty, researchers, graduate students, and staff across the three campuses of the University of Toronto.
The following list is organized alphabetically by last name and is not differentiated by role or status.
Learn more about courses in Disability Studies at UofT here.
Susan Antebi (she/her)
Professor of Spanish and Portugeuese, University of Toronto
[Image description: A photo of a middle-aged light-skinned woman with chin-length brown hair. She is smiling at the camera with her head tilted to one side. She wears a neutral colored blouse with small flower pattern and stands in a room with light blue walls and sunshine coming through the windows.]
Chloë G. K. Atkins (she/her)
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto
[Image description: A photo of a middle-aged woman with short brown hair, and with gray at the temples. She is smiling at the camera with her head tilted to one side. She wears a cream-coloured, cable-knit sweater with a pale blue scarf around her neck. She stands in front of green vines in a woodland]
Hilary Brown
Assistant Professor, Department of Health & Society, University of Toronto Scarborough and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health
[Image description: Hilary, a white woman with long brown hair, wears a light blue shirt and navy blazer, and smiles at the camera]
Ron Buliung
Department of Geography, Geomatics and Environment, University of Toronto Mississauga
Graduate Chair, Geography and Planning
[Image description: Headshot of Professor Ron Buliung from the shoulders up smiling wearing a grey collared shirt and clear framed glasses.]
Leslie Carlin
Senior Research Associate, Department of Physical Therapy, University of Toronto
I am a medical anthropologist with an undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Between 1994 and 2010, I lived in the UK, where I taught anthropology at the University of Durham for four years, and then joined the research staff first at the University of Newcastle and later at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Since 2011 I have been based in the Health Services Outcomes and Evaluation Research Unit within the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Toronto, where I am a senior research associate. Current topics of interest include knowledge translation, osteoporosis and risk assessment, supporting primary care practitioners in managing patients with chronic pain (through UHN’s Project ECHO Ontario / Chronic Pain and Opioid Stewardship program), aging and technology (with AGE-WELL-NCE), and spinal cord injury. In my spare time I write fiction and creative non-fiction.
Keywords: chronic pain; osteoporosis, knowledge translation; spinal cord injury; medical anthropology
Email: leslie.carlin@utoronto.ca
[Image description: a head shot of an older white woman with dark, curly, chin-length hair. Trees and the CN Tower are visible but out of focus in the background]
Deanna D’Souza
Previous Centre Coordinator, Centre for Global Disability Studies
Deanna D’Souza is the Centre Coordinator for The Centre for Global Disability Studies. She has over 5 years of experience providing program coordination support, 3 of which have been in Equity and Diversity work. In addition to her role as Centre Coordinator, Deanna also supports the Toronto initiative for Diversity and Inclusion (TIDE), a grassroots service group consisting of University of Toronto (U of T) faculty members from across disciplines, with a focus on advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion at U of T.
Prior to working at U of T, Deanna supported a national program of work on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at National Health Service (NHS) in London, England. Deanna holds a Bachelor of Arts in Arts and Contemporary Studies from Toronto Metropolitan University, with a Major in Global Studies and a Minor in Politics.
Email: cgds.utsc@utoronto.ca
[Image Description: Coloured headshot of a brown skinned woman with brown eyes and medium length dark brown hair. Her head is tilted to one side and she is smiling at the camera.]
Maddy De Welles
PhD Student, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto
Madeleine (Maddy) De Welles is a PhD student in disability studies in the Social Justice Education department at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE, University of Toronto). Maddy’s research and writing focuses on disability studies and childhood studies, and she is guided by phenomenology and interpretive sociology. She is especially interested in writing about children’s artefacts, such as storybooks, dolls, television shows, and young adult novels. Maddy also loves teaching and working with children of all ages.
Keywords: disability studies; childhood studies
[Image description: a female-presenting, white woman looks, smiling at the camera. She has long dark brown hair. She is wearing round glasses and a burgundy short-sleeved shirt]
Tina Doyle (She/her)
Director of AccessAbility Services at the University of Toronto Scarborough
Sessional Lecturer, Department of Health & Society
Tina Doyle is the Director of AccessAbility Services at the University of Toronto Scarborough where she provides leadership on accommodation and accessibility. Tina has worked to address systemic barriers and social justice in education for over twenty-five years. She has an interest in coalition forming between disability services and disability studies and advocacy approaches to disrupt systems and create positive social change.
With ten years’ experience participating on Ministry Working groups, the Minister for Seniors and Accessibility appointed Tina to lead the province’s legislated AODA Post-Secondary Education Standards Development Committee. The committee developed recommendations to address systemic barriers in education provided by Ontario publicly funded colleges and universities. Tina was also appointed to the Government of Ontario’s Accessibility Standards Advisory Council and isa member of the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Disability Issues Financial Aid Working Group.
Tina holds a Master of Science in Disability Services in Higher Education from CUNY and completed a Graduate Certificate in Postsecondary Disability Services from the University of Connecticut.
Keywords: disability, disability services in higher education, accommodation, accessible education, accessibility, universal instructional design
[Image Description: Close-up colour portrait of Tina Doyle smiling. She has long blond hair, below her shoulders, with blue/green eyes. She is wearing a black turtleneck with a cream background.]
Keegan H. (He/They)
Centre Coordinator, Centre for Global Disability Studies
Keegan (he/they) is a first year Masters of Information student with the Faculty of Information, with a concentration in Human Centered Data Science. For the last 12 years, his work has focused on non-profit and grassroots community development within the 2S-LGBTQ+ community.
They are currently the lead and co-founder of the In Love and Leather Community Archive- a grassroots, queer/trans initiative dedicated to processing the personal collections of queer and trans older adults and elders.
Keywords: disability justice, care work, harm reduction, crip studies, mad studies, anti-carceral, non-profit, community development, data science
[Image Description: Close-up color portrait of Keegan smiling. They are a white-passing non-binary person and have long, curly brown hair with bangs. Two piercings on the right side of their lip and one in the bridge of their nose. He is wearing a grey, navy blue and white striped sweater.]
Jose Miguel (Miggy) Esteban
PhD Candidate, Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
Jose Miguel (Miggy) Esteban is a dance/movement artist and educator based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Miggy is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, where his research is oriented through disability studies and dance/performance studies to reimagine educational praxis. Influenced by disability arts and culture, Black radical traditions, Indigenous storytelling, and queer performance, his dissertation project engages in embodied practices of improvised research-creation to re-interpret curriculum as a choreographic site for inspiring pedagogies of/through dance. His work has been published in Canadian Theatre Review, Disability Studies Quarterly, Journal for Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Liminalities, and in various edited volumes.
Keywords: disability studies, dance/performance studies, educational studies, research-creation, critical and creative interpretive methods
E-mail: miggy.esteban@mail.utoronto.ca
[Image description: A side profile of Miggy, who crouches amidst bushes and white flowers that recede blurrily into the background. His fingers gently crawl up from his long-sleeved maroon shirt, over his chin and lips, and toward his black, wavy hair. The brown skin of his cheek is caressed by his palm as he looks down with eyes closed in contemplation.]
Jessica Fields
Professor and Chair, Department of Health and Society, University of Toronto Scarborough
[Image description: a light-skinned person with short gray hair and black and tortoise-shell cat-eye glasses looks at the camera over her left shoulder. She is smiling with light pink lips and her teeth showing. Her face is lightly wrinkled with brow lines and laugh lines. She wears a black turtleneck and small silver earrings]
Andi Gilker
Ph.D. at the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto
[Image description: Andi, a white woman with long brown hair and hazel eyes, is sitting in front of a brick wall and an attached bookshelf. There is a keyboard to her right. She is photographed in a medium close up, with left her arm in the frame. Her left forearm has a silver braided chain bracelet. She’s wearing a vintage purple shirt.]
Marlene Goldman
Professor, Department of English, Institute for Life Course and Aging, University of Toronto
[Image description: A smiling, light-skinned woman with short, red-blond hair looks at the camera. She is wearing glasses with red, rectangular frames]
Cassandra Hartblay (She/her or They/them)
Director (on leave), CGDS
Assistant Professor , Department of Health & Society , Graduate Faculty in the Department of Anthropology and the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies
[Image description: Portrait color photo from the mid-chest up. Dr. Hartblay is standing on a beach on a cold and overcast day wearing a grey wool coat, black sweater, and gold earrings. Their hair is short on the sides and long and swoopy medium brown on top. They are smiling just a little bit so that you can see dimples but not teeth]
Devon Healey
Assistant Professor, Disability Studies Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto
[Image description: Devon has medium brown shoulder-length hair that has a slight wave to it in this photo. She has blue eyes and white skin. Her head is slightly titled down with her eyes raised looking directly toward the camera. The photo is a tight shot of Devon’s face and shoulders]
Nancy Johnston
Associate Professor, Teaching, in The Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and Women’s and Gender Studies at UTSC
[Image description: a light-skinned white woman with short red hair wearing cat-eye purple glasses looks into the camera. She is smiling with laugh lines around her eyes. Her partially visible a grey dress has a design of small blue typewriters.]
Gyuzel Kamalova
PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Gyuzel entered a PhD program in Socio-Cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto in 2019. She completed her MA in Anthropology at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver and MA in Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her PhD research focuses on disability diagnosis and implications diagnosis has for people with disabilities in their everyday lives in highly medicalized post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Her research interests include critical disability studies, care, post-socialism, ethnographic fiction, performative ethnography and feminist ethnography.
Her doctoral research focuses on cognitive disability diagnosis in highly medicalized post-Socialist context.
Keywords: disability, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, stigma, institutionalization, care, post-Soviet
[Image description: A picture of Gyuzel outside by a lake on a sunny Fall day. She has brown straight mid-length hair. She wears a green parka over a white sweater and a grey jacket. Her head is turned slightly to the left]
Vanessa Maloney
PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Vanessa Maloney is a fourth year PhD candidate in Socio-Cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto who has conducted ethnographic research with disabled adults and care services in the Cook Islands, as well as past projects in New Zealand and Tonga. Vanessa’s current work traces how networks of care are carved out within global flows of power, people, and money, and how these care economies unevenly shape disability experiences globally. This work draws on critical disability studies, feminist theories of care and anthropological understandings of interdependency to look at how care is negotiated within the constraints of global capitalism and neocolonialism.
Selected teaching and research interests: feminist and anthropological theories of care; global critical disability studies; the Pacific region; anthropology of exchange and personhood; cross cultural studies of ageing
[Image description: photo shows a person with short curly brown hair, light skin and blue eyes with a bright blue T-shirt standing in front of a sunny backdrop of green foliage]
Anne McGuire
Associate Professor, program for Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity at New College, University of Toronto
[Image description: Anne is smiling to the camera, wearing glasses, red lipstick, and a black shirt.]
Aparna Raghu Menon (She/her)
PhD Student, Social and Behavioural Health Sciences, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
Aparna Raghu is currently a PhD candidate at the Social and Behavioural Health Sciences at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Her research on autism and autistic non-verbal communication is oriented through a disability studies and social justice framework. Influenced by disability arts and culture, communication theory, posthumanism and feminist-queer theory, Aparna’s dissertation project examines the norms and assumptions that underpin medicalized approaches to non-verbal communication. In doing so, she hopes to open up space within disability studies for an exploration of autistic communication that takes into account the materiality of communication, relational embodiment, the environment and the perspectives of autistic communicators.
Keywords: disability studies, autism, autistic communication, critical and creative interpretive methods
E-mail: aparna.menon@mail.utoronto.ca
[Image Description: A brown-skinned woman with black shoulder-length hair and dark brown eyes is looking at the camera. She is wearing a white blouse, a grey hoodie and a necklace with sky-blue beads and a silver coin. She is standing in front of a dresser that holds a blue and white vase and two ceramic cats.]
Adrianna Michell (She/her)
PhD candidate, Department of English Literature, University of Toronto
Adrianna completed her MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory at McMaster University. Adrianna’s SSHRC-funded dissertation addresses temporality in contemporary North American fiction via the intersecting fields of disability studies and ecocriticism, or what can be termed eco-crip theory. Her past research in the digital humanities and critical health humanities informs her current interests in literary and cultural representations of non-normative bodyminds and environments. Outside of her academic work, Adrianna contributes to ongoing work in anti-oppression and sexual violence prevention in the student community.
Keywords: critical disability studies, contemporary fiction, eco-criticism, eco-crip theory, crip time
[Image description: Adrianna, a white woman, stands outside backgrounded by an iron gate and brick wall. She is photographed from the waist up and is smiling while turned away to look to the side of the camera. She has long auburn hair and wears a blue and purple blouse.]
Aparna Nair
Assistant Professor, Department for Health and Society, University of Toronto Scarborough
[Image Description: An Indian woman with frizzy curly dark brown hair, with a silver nose stud in her left nostril smiles with her mouth closed, her head tilted.]
David Pettinicchio
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto Mississauga
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Hannah Quinn
PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology & Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto
Hannah is a 4th year PhD Candidate in Anthropology and Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. She is working with intellectually disabled adults in Montréal, Québec to build consent cultures and dismantle ableism. Hannah is currently ‘in the field’ where she is conducting ethnographic research at day centres that provide social and education services to the anglophone disability community in Montréal. By focusing on presumptions about (in)capacity to consent, Hannah’s research explores the disproportionate levels of sexualized violence and ableism experienced by intellectually disabled adults, the regulation of their intimate and lives, and the limits of the consent model for solving the problem of sexual and structural violence. Her work emerges at the intersection of anthropology, disability justice, and queer studies. As an applied anthropologist, Hannah is committed to community-driven work, feminist research methods, and accessibility as a research and interpersonal ethic. Hannah is also an educator and facilitator with expertise in sex education, consent practices, and accessibility. Key words: ethnography; ableism; intellectual disability; intimacy & sexuality; ethics of consent; settler colonialism
Email: Hannah.quinn@mail.utoronto.ca
[Image description: A white women with short curly red hair smiles at the camera. She is wearing a brown and black leopard print silk shirt. The trees in the background are autumnal yellow and green leaves]
Simone Lavoie-Racine (She/her)
PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Simone is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Using the insights of feminist disability studies and medical anthropology, her work delves into the experiences of endometriosis, a common chronic illness, as they unfold in Quebec, Canada. She is interested in exploring how the object of endometriosis is mobilized and enacted by the people living with it, and by disability activists and medical practitioners.
She holds an MA and a BA in Anthropology from Université Laval.
Keywords: medical anthropology, feminist disability studies, endometriosis, chronicity, care, Quebec
Email: simone.lavoieracine@mail.utoronto.ca
[Image description: A picture of Simone, a white woman, in a red jacket with her arms crossed. She has chin-length wavy brown hair and is smiling at the camera. Behind her is a fall landscape overseeing the St Lawrence river.]
Tim Ross
Scientist, Bloorview Research Institute, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital
Assistant Professor (Status), Department of Geography & Planning and the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute, University of Toronto
[image description: Tim, a white man with short light brown hair, is smiling. He is wearing glasses, a white collared shirt, and a navy sport coat.]
Katherine Schaap Williams
Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Toronto
[Image description: a white woman with short brown hair and glasses, wearing a black dress and colorful necklace, smiles at the camera. She stands on grass, under a tree, in front of a building of brick and glass]
Tanya Titchkosky
Professor, Department of Social Justice Education, OISE, University of Toronto
[Image description: A white woman with shoulder-length blonde hair smiles at the camera. She is wearing a blue top and a black cardigan.]
Walter Rafael Villanueva
PhD Student, Department of English, University of Toronto
Walter Rafael Villanueva is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and holds research positions at the Centre for Global Disability Studies and the Department of Health & Society at the University of Toronto. Using a critical disability studies and mad studies framework, his work explores the metaphorization of madness in contemporary Canadian memoirs and novels written by racialized authors.
Research interests: post-WWII Canadian literature, critical disability studies, mad studies, history of psychiatry in Canada
Email: walter.villanueva@mail.utoronto.ca
[Image Description: Walter, a Filipino-Cuban man with shaggy, curly brown hair, smiles meekly in a red hoodie.]
Zoë H Wool
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto Mississauga
[Image Description: Black and white photo of a white person with short curly hair, nose and ear piercings, and blocky glasses. The person is standing next to a palm plant in front of a wooden fence bedecked with a string of lights. She smiles and looks sideways at the camera while gesturing to the black text on her light grey shirt. It reads: ” ‘All these crackers…and no soup’ Dr. Bianca Lauriano #CiteBlackWomen.” ]
Alumni
Elaine Cagulada
Alumni, Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
SSHRC postdoctoral fellow, Department of Gender Studies, Queen’s University.
Dr. Elaine Cagulada researches and writes in the fields of disability studies, black studies, and sociology, and she also teaches in these areas. Animated by a will to notice the magic of interpretation, Elaine’s work is concerned with stories as sites of containment and possibility. Indebted to the wisdom of Black, Indigenous, racialized, queer, disabled/Mad storytellers, she understands the urgency of rupturing and disturbing carceral logics and enclosures through the constitutive force of narrative. Heeding this call nourishes dreams of being together through, with, and in disability differently. Currently, Elaine is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Gender Studies at Queen’s University where she explores stories of race and disability as un/told through the memorialization of Canada’s carceral institutions.
Keywords: interpretive disability studies; philosophies of race; deafness; policing; carceral practices
Email: elaine.cagulada@mail.utoronto.ca
[Image description: A person is standing and smiling with their hands tucked into their back pockets. Their head is slightly turned away from the camera.]
Efrat Gold
Alumni, Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoPost-Doc Fellow, York UniversityDr Efrat Gold is a postdoctoral fellow at York University, engaging in mad and disability studies. Using interpretive and critical theory and methods, Gold critiques the psy-complex, moving toward contextualized and relational understandings of suffering, crisis, and distress, and foregrounding those most vulnerable and marginalized by psychiatric power, discourse, and treatments. Her scholarship focuses on constructions of psychiatric legitimacy that naturalize and reproduce medicalized understandings of human suffering, thereby casting off all other possibilities. Through explorations of norms and meaning-making, Gold unsettles psychiatric ideology by unearthing the present absences of those deemed mad and exploring life-affirming possibilities for mad inclusion. Gold’s publications appear in scholarly and community venues, indicating her commitment to producing research and pedagogy that is accessible to and includes mad and disabled people through consultation, activism, and solidarity. Using archival material and artefacts related to mad and disabled people’s history, Gold’s unique scholarly approach unearths the often-overlooked active role of mad and disabled people in pushing back against oppressive boundaries of normalcy and creating affirmative alternatives and potentials. Motivated by social justice-informed approaches to madness and disability, Gold works across difference, moving towards an emancipative politics that recognizes the entwined landscape of oppression within efforts to build different futures.To read more on her position on psychiatry and alternative approaches see: https://health.yorku.ca/health-profiles/index.php?dept=&mid=2086118Keywords: creative disability studies, critical dance/performance studies, improvisation, interpretive methods of research-creation, curriculum and pedagogy
[Image description: a light-skinned person with medium-length wavy brown hair and clear-framed glasses looks at the camera, smiling slightly, wearing a white shirt and pin-striped blazer. The background is blurred graffiti in an alleyway, with the sun shining through]
Celeste Pang
Alumni, Department of Anthropology , University of TorontoAssociate Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, Mount Royal University.Celeste is a sociocultural and medical anthropologist whose research, education, and community work focus on aging, disability, and care access and equity, with significant focus on 2SLGBTQIA+ issues. Celeste completed a PhD and Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Anthropology and was a Graduate Student Research Assistant Fellow and Program Coordinator at CGDS. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies at Mount Royal University. Key words: aging; disability; care; consent and capacity; gender and sexuality; ethics; ethnography Website: https://celestepang.ca/Email: ncpang@mtroyal.ca
[Image description: A tan skinned person with short dark hair smiles into the camera. They are wearing a dark green blazer and standing outside against a dark blue textured wall.]
Lesley A. Tarasoff
(She/her)
Almuni, Department of Health and Society, University of Toronto
Program Manager, Provincial Council for Maternal and Child Health
Lesley A. Tarasoff, PhD, completed a CIHR-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in summer 2023 (Department of Health and Society, University of Toronto Scarborough; and, Azrieli Adult Neurodevelopmental Centre, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health). Under the supervision of Dr. Hilary Brown, she led the qualitative component of a NIH-funded project on the perinatal health of women with disabilities in Ontario as well as engaged in research on the preconception health and reproductive life plans of women with disabilities.
She holds a PhD in Public Health Sciences, with a specialization in women’s health, from the University of Toronto. Primarily drawing on qualitative methodologies, her program of research aims to understand and address disparities and inequities in reproductive and perinatal health and health care experiences among often-stigmatized and marginalized populations, notably women with disabilities and sexual minority women. You can read more about her research here: http://www.latarasoff.com
Keywords: Community-based research; disability; feminist disability studies; health equity; LGBTQ health; perinatal health; qualitative research; reproductive health
Email: lesley.tarasoff@utoronto.ca
Twitter: @latarasoff
[Image description: A head shot of a light-skinned woman, with green eyes and long brown hair, who is wearing brown glasses, bright pink-red lipstick, and a maroon shirt. She is smiling but no teeth are showing. A brick wall covered in green ivy is visible but out of focus in the background.]