Kathleen Bogart, PhD is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Disability and Social Interaction Lab at Oregon State University. She is a social/health psychologist specializing in disability, ableism, and rare disorders such as facial paralysis. Dr. Bogart received the first annual Social Personality and Health Network Diversity in Research Award and was named OSU Honors College Eminent Mentor in 2022. 

An advocate for people with rare disorders and disabilities, she serves on several boards including the American Psychological Association Committee on Disability Issues in Psychology and the Moebius Syndrome Foundation Scientific Advisory Board. Passionate about disability community-building, she is the co-founder of the Disability Advocacy and Research Network (DARN!) for psychologists who have and/or specialize in disability, and she is the faculty advisor for OSU's Disabled Students Union.

In 2019, she co-edited the Journal of Social Issues special issue on Ableism. She is an Associate Editor of Personality and Social Psychology Review and Rehabilitation Psychology. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, New York Times, Time, Science Magazine, Financial Times, and Inside Higher Ed. Dr. Bogart presents to and consults with international academic, general, and TEDx audiences about disability awareness, disability as diversity, and facial paralysis, and she blogs about these topics for Psychology Today. 

We look forward to speaking with Dr. Bogart about founding and the work in DARN!, her experiences of conducting psychology research and teaching about disability, rare diseases, and ableism, as well as the intersections of academic and advocacy work within disability communities. 

Madeline Brodt, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Community Health Sciences, Counseling & Counseling Psychology at Oklahoma State University. She attended DePaul University with a focus on Psychology and minors in history and Italian. She holds an MS and PhD from University of Massachusetts Boston.

Academically, Dr. Brodt’s work focuses on three main areas: experiences of sexual violence, disability, and transforming training for psychologists. She is currently working on three projects: understanding the negative experiences of racial and ethnic minority graduate students in psychology doctoral programs, interviews with disabled people about how they judge themselves by non-disabled standards, and a study to identify how psychologists conceptualize disability in their work with clients. 

Clinically, Dr. Brodt uses an integrative approach that primarily draws from feminist therapy and Rogerian theory and incorporates CBT techniques, as appropriate. 

We look forward to speaking with Dr. Brodt about her experiences of applying disability justice concepts to disability and feminist research, as well as the overlap between her research and disability advocacy work within and outside academia.

Dr. Celeste E. Orr is a Part-time Professor & Research Associate at the University of Ottawa in the Institute of Feminist & Gender Studies. Orr holds a PhD in Feminist & Gender Studies, a MA in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory, a MA in Philosophy, and a BA in Philosophy & English Literature. Orr's research is situated at the intersection of intersex, disability, and queer studies. They explore the complex discursive, political, and embodied connection between intersex and disability as well as compulsory dyadism and able-bodiedness. Orr interrogates and extends questions of the ever-shifting categorization of body-minds and culturally mandated ways of being as well as attends to the haunting effects of pathologization, trauma, and violence through an intersectional lens. Their book, Cripping Intersex (2022), was recently published by UBC Press. Orr has co-edited (with Shoshana Magnet) a special issue of Feminist Theory, launching the field of Feminist Loneliness Studies (2022). Their research has also been featured in Surveillance & Society (2022), Feminist Theory (2022), From Band-Aids to Scalpels: Motherhood Experiences in/of Medicine (Demeter Press 2021), Boyhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal (2019), Mothering, Mothers, and Sport: Experiences, Representations, Resistances (Demeter Press 2018), and Connecting, Rethinking and Embracing Difference ([Interdisciplinary Press 2016] Brill 2019). Orr’s work will soon be featured in Covid and…How to Do Rhetoric in a Pandemic (Michigan State University Press 2023). Currently, Orr and Nicholas Hyrnyk are working on a SSHRC-funded research project titled, “Anticipated Violence and the Queer Subject,” and their book proposal of the same name has been accepted by Concordia University Press.

We look forward to speaking with Dr. Orr about their book Crippling Intersex, their perspectives on interactions and intersections of intersex and disability experiences, and their current projects. 

Ms. Leslie A. Zukor is a neurodivergent Master's candidate at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, who is a passionate advocate for equity, representation, and justice for the disability community. In 2021, she founded the first affinity group for students with disabilities at a journalism school in the United States, the Columbia Journalism School Alliance of Journalists with Disabilities, of which she is the president.

Later that year, she co-founded Columbia University's campus-wide disability affinity and activist group, the Columbia Student Disability Network, where she also serves as the president.

She also serves as the 2022-2023 Journalism School representative to the Columbia Health Student Health Advisory Committee, and she was a 2022 Columbia Journalism School Welcome Ambassador, where she helped students register with disability services and gave students advice about accommodations.

In February 2023, she received a University Life Social Justice Mini-Grant to make her dream of hosting the first affinity graduation for students with disabilities at Columbia University a reality. The celebration will be on April 22, and affiliates from 17 different Columbia schools have RSVP'd.

This month, March 2023, she was selected as the Journalism School Awardee of the Campbell Award of Columbia University. The award honors one student at each of Columbia's 19 schools who demonstrates exceptional leadership and Columbia spirit.

We look forward to speaking with Ms. Zukor about funding the Columbia Student Disability Network and the CJS Alliance of Journalists with Disabilities, her experiences as a neurodivergent graduate student and her perspectives on how to apply disability justice in academia and journalism.