About

I am an Associate Professor in Legal Studies at Ontario Tech University. I earned a Doctoral degree in Critical Disability Studies at York University, where I studied regulation of reproductive technologies; and a Master’s degree in Philosophy at the University of Guelph, where I studied same-sex marriage and constitutional law.

My research takes up how non-normative bodies are read, marked, and produced in and through socio-legal discourse. I am committed to communities and embodiments that claim the following identifiers: cripped (or disabled, and especially persons deemed intellectually disabled), Mad (persons positioned against and within mental health regimes), fat (bodies framed as obese and discriminated against in the interest of public health), queer and trans (persons who identify as members of LGBTQ+ communities).

I am a member of Recounting Huronia, a research collective that documents the history of the Huronia Regional Centre (a Canadian institution that housed persons with intellectual disability diagnoses) from the perspective of its survivors. This work earned the collective a Community Living Ontario James Montgomerie Community Award in recognition of leadership and innovation in furthering Community Living goals. I have co-written a book titled Institutional Violence and Disability: Punishing Conditions. I was also the founder and lead coordinator of the Huronia Survivors Speakers Bureau, which enabled intellectually disabled institutional survivors to tell their stories to audiences across Canada.

Currently, I am focused on research and activism related to deinstitutionalization, prison and police abolition, and migrant justice.

My record of service to academic community includes acting as President of the Canadian Disability Studies Association, and founding the still-active student journal Critical Disability Discourse.