People

There is a monarch butterfly with bright orange wings with black and white spots, perched on the words “WE NEED EACH OTHER” next to it.

The website is growing to be a broader digital community space. Please come by often to see any updates!

Facilitator

A photo of Akemi, a smiling East Asian woman in her 40s with side-shaved, medium-length, black, straight hair. She is wearing a black beret, green scarf, and a white mask. She is sitting outside in front of the river and trees.

Akemi Nishida (she/her)

Akemi uses research, education, and activism to investigate how ableism occurs in relation to racism, cis-heteropatriarchy, and other forms of social oppression. Akemi’s disability justice activism extends both locally and nationally, whether through her involvement with the racial and disability justice grassroots organization, AYLP, in Chicago or as a research assistant for the Disability Project at the Transgender Law Center. Nishida is the author of Just Care: Messy Entanglements of Disability, Dependency, and Desire (Temple University Press, 2022) and teaches feminist disability studies at University of Illinois Chicago.

Media Director

Nour is an Arab-American femme person smiling at the camera. They are wearing a sleeveless black top and small hoop earrings with their long, curly hair worn down. Sunlight comes in from the side, and wooden cabinets are visible in the background.

Nour A. Ghobrial (she/they)

Nour is a PhD candidate in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her work utilizes arts-based methodologies to center people with distressed eating and amplify their perspectives on care. Her work is informed by community-based care practices and disability justice, including how disabled communities support one another through disasters and everyday crises.

Fletcher, a white transmasculine person with red hair, green eyes, freckles, and hexagon-shaped gold glasses, smiles at the camera. They are wearing a black shirt and a short silver chain necklace.

Fletcher Weiss (They/He)

Fletcher Weiss (they/he) is a PhD candidate in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Their research is on disability and the trans body in speculative fiction. He uses humanities methods and literary analysis in his work in order to theorize what it means to represent intersections of disability and transness in speculative fictional worlds. They are especially interested in the hope and community-building that can come out of imagining a better future through trans disabled speculative fiction.

Artist Collaborator

Headshot of Em Nott: Em is a white femme person with round glasses smiling at the camera in front of green plants. They wear a see-through black collared shirt and black overalls with gold necklace and earrings, and their long blonde hair is pulled back.

Emily Nott (she/they)

Emily Nott, M.Ed. (she/they), is a youth-focused artist, educator, and researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where they are an instructor and doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Instruction. Their work uses the arts as a transformative tool for social change, centering out-of-school time educators, teaching artists, and the young people they serve. Emily has taught undergraduate courses in Arts Integration, Social Justice, and Intersectionality and is a researcher with the UW Arts Collaboratory. They have been involved in arts organizing with Andleeb Cartonera in Madison, Teachers for Social Justice in Chicago, and Artists for Radical Imagination in Los Angeles. Emily co-authored and illustrated Crip Wisdoms, A Feminist Disability Studies Coloring Book with Miso Kwak.

Researchers

Bella Chamberland (they/them)

Blog Contributors

Picture of Grace Tsao: Pictured is an Asian American woman with light/medium skin wearing bright lipstick, and long dark hair. She is wearing a red velvet jumpsuit, green velvet boots, large gold hoop earrings, beaded bracelet, and a jade and pearl necklace. She is seated in a black and pink power wheelchair with a black headrest. In the background is a creamy beige garage door.

Grace Tsao (she/her)

Grace Tsao spent her career in higher education, non-profit, and state government working in various capacities including teaching, research, and grant writing. Grace has a B.S. in News-Editorial Journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an M.S. in Cultural Foundations of Education with a concentration in Multicultural Education from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and an M.A. in Sociology from Loyola University Chicago. She has served on the State Rehabilitation Council in Illinois and the advisory board of the Disabilities Fund at the Chicago Community Trust. She was the former Chair and Advocacy Chair of the Statewide Independent Living Council of Illinois (SILC) and is a member of SILC’s Emergency Preparedness and Advocacy advisory groups.

Community Advisors

Coming soon…