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Webinar: Cripping Conferences – Rethinking Accessibility and Participation in Academic Spaces

This webinar, Cripping Conferences – Rethinking Accessibility and Participation in Academic Spaces, will feature Rhys Dreeszen Bowman and Leah Dudak, co-authors of Cripping Conferences: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Disability in Academia. Drawing from their personal and scholarly insights as disabled scholars, they will critically examine how academic conferences often fail to meet accessibility needs and how these experiences illuminate broader inclusion issues within academia.

Attendees will learn about the nuanced challenges disabled academics face in conference spaces and engage in a dialogue around actionable strategies to make conference participation more equitable. This session supports SIG-HLTH’s ongoing advocacy for hybrid access and aligns with broader ASIS&T initiatives to foster inclusion.

Presenters

Dr. Rhys Dreeszen Bowman (they/them/theirs)

Rhys Dreeszen Bowman is a Ph.D. graduate at the School of Information Science at the University of South Carolina. Their dissertation, “From Margins to Center: Community-Based Action Research with Transgender Communities in South Carolina," studies how trans people use information to survive in South Carolina.

Leah T. Dudak (she/her/hers)

Leah T. Dudak is a former librarian and current Ph.D. candidate at Syracuse University’s Information School. Dudak’s research looks at the embodied work of public libraries and the trauma that library staff encounter giving attention to supporting library workers, systemic issues contributing to trauma, trauma-informed care, and librarianship. She also views her work through embodied, feminist, disability, and artistic lenses. She holds an MLIS from the University of Illinois.

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