Congratulations to these UW students, staff, and faculty who were awarded 2019 Harlan Hahn Endowment Fund disability studies research grants!
Winners & projects
Faculty/staff awards:
José Alaniz
Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Comparative Literature (adjunct) at the University of Washington, Seattle, he has published two books, Komiks: Comic Art in Russia (University Press of Mississippi, 2010) and Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond (UPM, 2014). His Harlan Hahn award will support his participation in two 2019 disability studies-related conferences: the Pacific and Western Disability Studies Symposium in Spokane, Washington and the Graphic Medicine Conference in Brighton, England.
Mark Harniss and Stephen Meyers
Mark Harniss, Director of the UW Disability Studies Program and Associate Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, and Stephen Meyers, Assistant Professor in the Department of Law, Societies and Justice, and the Jackson School for International Studies, have received a Harlan Hahn award to foster an international disability studies teaching and research collaboration. Their funds will bring two renowned disability studies scholars to UW: Floyd Morris, Director of the Centre for Disability Studies, University of West Indies (UWI), and Brian Watermeyer, faculty member in the Division of Disability Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. Both visitors will give talks, mentor students, and contribute to the development of disability-related Collaborative Online International Learning activities (COIL) that will create a coalition with UCT and UWI to allow some form of shared learning experiences between Jamaica, South Africa, and the USA.
E.T. Russian
Multi-sensory artist based in the Pacific Northwest, Russian has been making zines, comics, video and installation art about disability, queerness, and life since the mid-90s. Russian is the author of The Ring of Fire Anthology and has been published in a number of books and periodicals including Disability in American Life: An Encyclopedia of Concepts, Politics, and Controversies, PEN Magazine, The Stranger, The Seattle Weekly, Real Change, When Language Runs Dry, The Graphic Medicine Manifesto and Gay Genius. This Harlan Hahn award will support a public multi-sensory art installation, including several disability justice scholars, artists and activists, on the theme of “Choosing What You’re Living For” at the Hedreen gallery on Capitol Hill in December 2019.
Student awards:
Sarah Arvey
Doctoral student in the Special Education department in the UW College of Education, researching the use of disability history and pride in teacher education and K-12 curriculum. In this work she foregrounds the voices of youth with disabilities, contributions of people with disabilities throughout history and civil rights movements, and intersectionality as an integral aspect of disability justice. Her Harlan Hahn project will fund a writing retreat for disabled scholars to build community and explore creative writing processes beyond ableist and racist paradigms of knowledge construction. The writing retreat will be a launching point for a disabled scholars and disability studies focused writing group in the upcoming academic year.
Isatou Jallow
Ph.D. student in the UW School of Law, with a research focus on inclusive education. She was born and raised in the Gambia and continues to advocate for a policy change in the Gambia that can create inclusiveness for persons with disabilities. She was a recipient of the UW Husky 100 award in 2017 for her work on behalf of women and currently serves as a commissioner on the City of Seattle Immigrant and Refugee Commission. Her Harlan Hahn award will fund a trip to Senegal for preliminary research on inclusive education at the primary level, as hindered by attitudes, cultures, poverty and stigma.
Megan McCloskey
Completing a PhD in law at UW, she is Senior Fellow with the Disability Inclusive Development Initiative at the International Policy Institute in the Jackson School of International Studies, and Fellow at the Comparative Law and Society Studies (CLASS) Center. Her Harlan Hahn award will to support her attendance at the Gender, Disability and Development Institute hosted by Mobility International USA July 22-25, 2019 in Eugene, Oregon. The GDDI brings together senior development professionals and participants in MIUSA’s Women’s Institute for Leadership and Development (WILD) to engage in dialogue about including women and girls with disabilities in development and humanitarian projects around the world. In addition to contributing to the development of an international collaborative research network of women working in the nexus of feminist advocacy and disability rights, the trip will help Megan to draft syllabi for proposed seminars on Feminist Theory, Disability and Law and Human Rights and Development.
Shixin Huang
PhD student in the Jackson School for International Studies. With the support of the Harlan Hahn award, she will travel to China this summer to undertake three months of ethnographic fieldwork for her doctoral dissertation Contested Space of Rights: International Norms, Authoritarian Politics, and Disability Activism in China.
Natalie Stagnone
Freshman at the University of Washington with a plan to double major in Disability Studies and Neuroscience. She is also in the Interdisciplinary Honors Program and minoring in Spanish. After launching a summer camp last summer for youth with and without disabilities, Natalie was driven to make programming available, inclusive and accessible year-round. At UW, she participated in a student-led initiative to have people with intellectual disabilities at the UW as students. With the Harlan Hahn award, Natalie will be launching a nonprofit organization called Thurston County Inclusion (T.C. Inclusion) based in Olympia, Washington. The organization will offer summer camps that are accessible and inclusive, programs to form mentorships between older and younger people with disabilities, and networking opportunities.
Gina Tersoriero
PhD student in Learning Sciences program in the College of Education. Gina will be traveling to the SciAccess conference at The Ohio State University this summer to present research related to teacher professional development at the intersection of science and inclusion. SciAccess brings together researchers, graduate students, scientists, special education teachers, and informal science educators (all with varying experiences of ability and disability) to discuss how science and STEM as a whole can be made more inclusive.
Ronnie Thibault
PhD Candidate in the UW Interdisciplinary Individual PhD Program, with support from the departments of Geography, History, and Disability Studies. Ronnie’s dissertation is a digital histories project with a central focus on comparing how domestic charity and humanitarian aid institutions in the U.S. have drawn upon, reinforced, or contested common misunderstandings about developmental and intellectual disabilities (DD/ID). With support from Harlan Hahn Endowment, Ronnie will travel to New York to explore the physical archives of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Eugenics Records Office.