Hilde Haualand is a social anthropologist and a professor at the Department of International Studies and Interpreting at OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University. She is a teacher and researcher in deaf studies, sign language interpreting as a profession and as a social institution, and language ideologies.
In her Phd she compared the disability politics and ideologies behind video interpreting services in the US, Sweden and Norway. Her research interests include research on sign language ideologies, deaf people, national and transnational networks among deaf people and sign language interpreting as a profession. In collaboration with Gallaudet University, Washington D.C. she has designed a collaborative online interactive course module in deaf studies and international sign.
Currently, she is the chair of the committee that will make a Norwegian Official Report (NOU) on Norwegian sign language.
Lydia X. Z. Brown is an advocate, organizer, attorney, strategist, and writer whose work focuses on interpersonal and state violence against disabled people at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, language, and nation. Their other interests include carcerality and institutional violence, asexuality as queerness, algorithmic harm as an accelerating force of systemic injustice, and the ableism-racism nexus of transracial and transnational adoption.
Lydia is an adjunct lecturer in the Women's and Gender Studies Program and the Disability Studies Program at Georgetown University, as well as Self-Advocacy Discipline Coordinator for the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities Fellowship program. They are also an adjunct professorial lecturer in American Studies in the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University.
Lydia is Policy Counsel for Privacy & Data at the Center for Democracy & Technology, focused on algorithmic discrimination and disability, as well as Director of Policy, Advocacy, & External Affairs at the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network, an autistic-led organization focused on disability, racial, and gender justice.
They are the current co-president of the Disability Rights Bar Association and Disability Justice Committee representative on the National Lawyers Guild board. Lydia founded the Autistic People of Color Fund, a project of collective care, redistributive justice, and mutual aid, and they are currently creating Disability Justice Wisdom Tarot.
Often, their most important work has no title, job description, or funding, and probably never will.
Rannveig Traustadóttir is Professor Emerita and Director of the Centre for Disability Studies, School of Social Sciences, University of Iceland. With a background in sociology and philosophy from the University of Iceland, she embarked on doctoral studies at Syracuse University and completed a PhD degree in Disability Studies and Gender Studies in 1992. Much of her academic career has focused on examining the intersection of disability, gender, and other aspects of inequalities.
Her recent research has regarded violence against disabled women, reproductive rights, independent living and personal assistance, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its importance in promoting human rights and equality for disabled people. Rannveig has published thirteen books and numerous scholarly articles and received many awards for her academic work as well as for her activism and advocacy for human rights. Rannveig was a founding member of NNDR, the Nordic Network on Disability Research, in 1997, and served as its President for many years. She has also been instrumental in developing Disability Studies as an academic field in the Nordic countries.
Recently her attention has turned towards analysing the history of ideas on disability and the way in which they have informed the development of disability policy, practice, services, and the everyday lives of disabled people. In addition to her academic work Rannveig has been an active advocate for human rights, in particular disability human rights, and her passion is combining activism and academia in bringing about social change and social justice.
Theresia Degener is professor of law and disability studies at Protestant University of Applied Sciences in Bochum, Germany and Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Maastricht, Netherlands.
She is the director of the Bochum Centre for Disability Studies BODYS. From 2011 to 2018 she was a member (and for the last 2 years the Chair) of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
She co-authored the background study of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Quinn / Degener (2002) Human rights and disability: The current use and future potential of United Nations human rights instruments in the context of disability, OHCHR, United Nations and has participated in drafting the CRPD.
Her research fields are anti-discrimination law, human rights, disability studies and gender studies.
