Contributors
Joshua St Pierre (PhD) is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta, Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Critical Disability Studies, and Principle Investigator of the Stuttering Commons. Dr. St. Pierre’s research seeks to make interventions on both theoretical and practical fronts. Working at the intersection of dysfluency studies, critical disability studies, and contemporary political theory, his research focuses on the interplay of communication and disability within information societies. His work also seeks to conceptualize and generate resources for radically accessible and hospitable communicative practices. His first monograph is titled Cheap Talk: Disability and the Politics of Communication, published by University of Michigan Press. He is an avid gardener.
Maddie Dempsey is an MA student in Political Science at the University of Alberta, currently working on her thesis, researching the socio-personal impacts of late autism diagnosis amongst women and queer folk, rooted in her own experience of being diagnosed with autism at 24. Maddie’s interest in critical disability studies began in Dr. Joshua St. Pierre’s virtual classroom in 2021, resonating with the affinity for community care and mutual aid that a crip identity embodied. Maddie is not a stutterer. She is hyper-verbal, often speaking too much, too fast, to loudly without noticing, and is currently exploring how this type of speech fits into the realm of dysfluency.
Danika Jorgensen-Skakum (she/her) is a queer and Métis PhD student in the University of Alberta's political science department. She received her MA in Gender and Social Justice (University of Alberta, Women and Gender Studies) and her BA in Women's and Gender Studies (University of Alberta). She is a Research Assistant for Stuttering Commons, and has been involved since the collective launched in 2022. Her current research interests include Indigenous relations, digital networks, infrastructure studies, posthumanism, material feminisms, critical disability studies, and (in)finitude. (Also muskrats.)