Disability Studies in Education SIG Leaders (2025-2026)

Social Media Co-Managers:

Isabel Mavrides-Calderon, Barnard College of Columbia University im2589@barnard.edu 

Arpita Sarker, College of Education, University of Iowa, arpita-sarker@uiowa.edu

OFFICER BIOS

Phillandra Smith Ph.D., is Co-chair for the DSE SIG. She is an Assistant Professor of Special Education and Critical Disability Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She earned her Ph.D. in Special Education from Syracuse University, where she also completed Certificates of Advanced Study in Women’s and Gender Studies and Disability Studies. An Afro-Caribbean scholar and educator, Dr. Smith brings years of experience in both K–12 and higher education. Her early education in the Caribbean, shaped by a majority Black faculty, laid the foundation for her commitment to affirming the intellectual identities of racially marginalized students. Her personal and professional experiences with disability and education inform her layered understanding of disability across cultural contexts. Dr. Smith’s research and teaching are grounded in anti-racist and inclusive pedagogies. She draws on frameworks such as DisCrit and critical disability studies to interrogate how whiteness and ableism shape the educational experiences of individuals with disabilities. Her work advocates for the integration of anti-racist praxis and anti-ableist practices in teacher preparation and emphasizes the presumption of competence, authentic representation, and culturally responsive approaches to disability.

Kathleen Mary Collins Ph.D.,  is Co-Chair of the Disability Studies in Education (DSE) Special Interest Group and an Associate Professor of Literacy Education in the College of Education at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research examines the production, impact, and interruption of deficit narratives surrounding students who are multiply marginalized through racialization, minoritization, and/or dis/ability identification. Informed by sociocultural theory, DSE and DisCrit, her work includes classroom-based investigations of interaction and instructional design as well as critical analyses of the positioning effects of institutional, political, and cultural discourses. Beyond her academic work, Dr. Collins enjoys gardening, creative writing, reading, spending time with family and engaging in community service.

Dr. Christa S. Bialka is Program Co-chair for DSE SIG. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education and Counseling at Villanova University, where she directs the Disability & Deaf Studies Program. Christa received her Ed.D. in Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research is focused on disrupting ableism in K-12 and higher education, implementing anti-ableist curriculum, as well as addressing disability as a component of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In 2023, Christa was awarded the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Outstanding Teaching. Prior to earning her doctorate, Christa taught English and Special Education in the Boston area. Christa is an active member of Disability Equality Education  and the Disability and Accessibility Action Group of H-CAN.

Dr. Sarah Young is a DSE SIG Program Co-Chair and Director of Disability Support Services at Trinity Washington University. In her daily work, she focuses on increasing accessibility and equity for students through staff and faculty development and improvement of institutional policy and processes. Her scholarship explores disability policy history and implementation, the impact of transition and orientation programming for first-time college students with disabilities, discourse analysis of institutional disability webpages, and systems analysis of disability offices and associated training, staffing, and functionality. As a practitioner and researcher, her goal is to confront disability stigma and discrimination in educational settings while advocating and providing space for self-authorship among disabled students. She also enjoys reading and spending time with family, friends, and her dog, Ziggy.

Dr. Chelsea Stinson is the Secretary/Treasurer of the DSE SIG and Assistant Professor of Inclusive Education at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Cortland. Dr. Stinson's research, teaching, and service focus on the experiences of emergent bilingual students, families, communities, school-community relationships, and teachers at the intersections of language, race, disability, migration, policy, and education. Dr. Stinson is also co-editor of Multiple Voices- Disability, Race, and Language Intersections in Special Education, which is the official, peer-reviewed journal of the Council for Exceptional Children's Division for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Exceptional Learners (DDEL). More importantly, she enjoys running, hiking, music, reading, dancing, and spending time outdoors with her children and very good dogs.

Isabel Mavrides-Calderon  is the Co-social media manager for DSE SIG. She is a student at Barnard College studying education, and is a disabled disability rights activist. She served on the White House Youth Policy Team during the Biden administration and currently works on the disability policy team at the NYC Comptroller’s Office. Believing in the importance of student-led research, Isabel began conducting research on disabled students in education 5 years ago. Her research on emergency planning for disabled students was used to inform a bill recently passed in Virginia.Her disability, accessibility, media and consulting work spans Broadway productions, The U.S. Department of Education, the Washington Post, NBC News, Cripple Media, the National Academy of Sciences, an Emmy-Award winning film, Telemundo and MTV. Isabel was named one of Teen Vogue’s 21 Under 21 Revolutionary Youth and was invited to the TIME100 Health Leadership Forum. She is a published young adult author with Rebel Girls. Isabel’s work can be seen on her Instagram and TikTok @powerfullyisa where she discusses disability rights.

Arpita Sarker PhD,  is the co-social media manager for the DSE SIG. She is a postdoctoral research scholar in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies, College of Education, University of Iowa. She received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Children’s Literature and Disability Studies from the College of Education, Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include Children’s literature, Critical Disability Studies, Anti-Caste Studies, Postcolonial and Decolonial Theory, and higher education. Arpita is from India and misses good food in the Midwest. She spends most of her time either cooking food or thinking about it. In her free time, she also likes reading dystopian novels, watching thrillers, and working out. 

DSE Tenets
To engage in research, policy, and action that

• contextualize disability within political and social 
• privilege the interest, agendas, and voices of people labeled with disability/disabled people
• promote social justice, equitable and inclusive educational opportunities, and full and meaningful access to all aspects of society for people labeled with disability/disabled people
• assume competence and reject deficit models of disability

The purpose of Disability Studies in Education is: to provide an organizational vehicle for networking among Disability Studies researchers in education; and to increase the visibility and influence of Disability Studies among all educational researchers.

Approaches to Theory, Research, & Practice in DSE

Examples of approaches to theory and DSE may include:

• Contrasts medical, scientific, psychological understandings with social and experiential understandings of disability
• Predominantly focuses on political, social, cultural, historical, social, and individual understandings of disability
• Supports the education of students labeled with disabilities in non-segregated settings from a civil rights stance.
• Engages work that discerns the oppressive nature of essentialized/categorical/medicalized naming of disability in schools, policy, institutions, and the law while simultaneously recognizing the political power that may be found in collective and individual activism and pride through group-specific claims to disabled identities and positions
• Recognizes the embodied/aesthetic experiences of people whose lives/selves are made meaningful as disabled, as well as troubles the school and societal discourses that position such experiences as “othered” to an assumed normate
• Includes disabled people in theorizing about disability

Examples of approaches to research and DSE may include:

• Welcomes scholars with disabilities and non-disabled scholars working together
• Recognizes and privileges the knowledge derived from the lived experience of people with disabilities
• Whenever possible adheres to an emancipatory stance (for example, working with people with disabilities as informed participants or co-researchers, not “subjects”)
• Welcomes intradisciplinary approaches to understanding the phenomenon of disability, e.g. with educational foundations, special education, etc.
• Cultivates interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the phenomenon of disability, e.g. interfacing with multicultural education, the humanities, social sciences, philosophy, cultural studies, etc.
• Challenges research methodology that objectifies, marginalizes, and oppresses people with disabilities.

Examples of approaches to practice and DSE may include:

• Disability primarily recognized and valued as natural part of human diversity
• Disability and inclusive education
• Disability culture and identity as part of a multicultural curriculum
• Disability Rights Movement studied as part of the civil rights movement
• Disability history and culture and the contributions of disabled people as integral to all aspects of the curriculum
• Supporting disabled students in the development of a positive disability identity

Future Possibilities

While Disability Studies stretches back for almost thirty years, DSE is a relatively new field, not yet a decade old. Bearing this in mind, scholars in DSE have articulated some areas of further potential study. These include:

• Constructing a new discourse of disability in education that emphasizes disability in its socio-political contexts and that is respectful of disabled people.
• Connections, overlaps, and dissonance between DSE and special education
• Tensions, paradoxes, contradictions, and reticence within education toward conceptualizations of diversity that include disability
• An intersectional approach to understanding disability at the interstices of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, etc.
• Explicit and tangible examples of ways in which DSE under girds classroom practices.