I am a white, queer, non-binary (pronouns: they/them), Disabled person. I am currently an Assistant Professor at McGill University's School of Information Studies and the Director of the Disability Archives Lab. I received my PhD from the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), with a Certificate in Gender Studies.

My current research lies at the intersection of disability studies, archival studies, and the history of science, centering on the history of natural history museums and their archives. My research often centers around the broad question: "How do we tell the history of disability when there is little or no archival evidence?" I am interested in the history of colonialism, toxicity, and the politicization of biological collections to trace histories of the conflation of disability, race, and animality in natural history and that conflation’s link to colonialist ideals. Disability studies offers critical epistemologies that work in tandem with critical race theory, affect theory, queer theory and feminist theory to investigate notions of "the normative". Through this work, I hope to expand feminist disability studies’ productive frameworks into archival studies and museum studies to open up new critical ways of understanding the collection, production, organization, and use of archival material, biological knowledge, history, and memory.

My methodologies are at once ethnographic and historical-archival: I use archival research to investigate historical narratives of disability, and I use empirical data collection techniques such as interviews and focus groups to address the contemporary impacts of archives on living disabled people. My historical research uses archival material to look for—and often fail to find—disabled people in history. I am interested in telling histories of disability that fall outside more obvious or stereotypical records of disabled people, and I am invested, in particular, in drawing attention to archival absences of disability. Through tracing subtle, absent, or tangential histories of disability in relation to the history of natural history museums, I draw attention to how archives mediate what one does or doesn’t find in the historical record. Through this research I have spearheaded unique research on disability theory in the field of archival studies and likewise have brought critical conversations of archives into the field of disability studies. I complement this historical-archival research with empirical community-centred research with living disabled people. Building ideas, scholarship, and research with and for disabled communities not only takes the needs of disabled people seriously as information users and as workers but also develops theory out of the lived experiences of disabled people. I use semi-structured interviews with disabled people, highlight major themes that emerge from the data, and involve the interviewees in multiple aspects of the research and writing process, where they have agency in how they are represented in publications. Both of these areas contribute to archival methodologies: I have written about methodological approaches to archival absences as well as detailed my approach to ongoing consent and interviewing, which contributes to empirical research methodologies.

You can read more about my projects here

More about my work: For almost 10 years I worked in various natural history museums managing projects for the curation of digital and physical collections of insect and other invertebrate collections. From individual specimen dissection and imaging to bulk data cleaning and uploading, I have worked along a spectrum of archival practices and explored how the digitization of historic collections can inform understandings of truth and objectivity, both for scientists and the general public. Through my archival work at large institutions such as the Field Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and the Swedish Museum of Natural History as well as smaller museums like the Oregon State Arthropod Collection, I have digitized millions of specimens and have been exposed to institutional perspectives and pedagogies on the digital record. Also within museums, I have also worked with d/Deaf, hard of hearing, and disabled communities to make museum and education initiatives more accessible. 

This work heavily influenced my masters research at the University of California Berkeley, where I focused on digital archive infrastructure and accessibility as well as mediated experiences of digital artifacts and the assumed objectivity of institutional information. During my masters degree, as a Research Assistant for the Essig Museum of Entomology, I redesigned the digital archive interface for CalBug, with a focus on user experience and user centered design. I also completed research on constructs of objectivity, affect, and animality in museum taxidermy under Dr. Mel Y. Chen.

In addition to my academic work, I am invested in disability justice, design justice, and social justice technologies. With Michelle Caswell, I have designed a poster, Identifying & Dismantling White Supremacy in Archives. In collaboration with design studio And Also Too and desirner, Una Lee, I have worked on a number of design justice projects, such as It's a Matter of Time: Systemic Review of Secure Isolation in Ontario Youth Justice Facilities.

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McGill University is situated on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst nations. We recognize and respect the Kanien’kehà:ka as the traditional custodians of the lands and waters on which we meet today.