Symposium Program

Kate Galloway is on faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where she teaches in the Electronic Arts, Music, and Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences/Critical Game Design programs. Her research and teaching address sonic responses to environmentalism, sound studies, digital culture and interactive media, and Indigenous musical modernities and ecological knowledge.

Emma Ben Ayoun is a PhD candidate and Teaching Assistant at the University of Southern California. She also works as an adjunct professor and is Managing Editor of the journal Discourse. Her dissertation, entitled “Sick cinema: illness, dis/ability, and the screen,” works at the intersection of disability studies, film theory, and visual studies.

Elizabeth McLain is a disabled autistic activist, Instructor of Musicology at Virginia Tech, and PhD candidate at the University of Michigan. She has published primarily on music and spirituality in the twentieth century, but her latest project considers disability culture, community, and music through the framework of Disability Justice.

Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist and a community performance artist who teaches at the University of Michigan and Goddard College. She is the Artistic Director of The Olimpias, an international disability culture collective. She lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she co-runs Turtle Disco, a somatic writing studio.

Erin Felepchuk is currently in their second year of the PhD program in Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph. Erin has an MA in Music and Culture from Carleton University and a Bachelor of Music from Carleton University. In their PhD work, Erin examines autistic stimming as an improvisatory cultural practice that is at the core of community-making strategies.

Alex Hedt recently completed a Master of Music in Ethnomusicology at The University of Melbourne with a historical and ethnographic examination of musical engagement in Melbourne’s d/Deaf communities. Alex’s own experiences as a hard-of-hearing and disabled musician shape her interest in the spaces between disabled and able-bodied identities in music.

Byrd McDaniel is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Emory University in the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. He researches popular music, listening norms, and digital cultures. His recent work appears in New Media & Society, Disability Studies Quarterly, and American Quarterly. He’s currently working on his first book project, Spectacular Listening.

Diana Wu is a PhD candidate in musicology at Western University. Her research focuses on madness and mad scenes in later twentieth-century anglophone opera. Originally hailing from the United States, she holds a Master's degree from CUNY: Queens College, and a Bachelor of Arts from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, both in music theory.

SK Sabada is a PhD student in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University. Aside from their artistic work as an Alternate Reality Game puppet master, SK's academic work focuses on the performativity of mad death through a critical mad studies lens, and how we stage and curate digitized depictions and representations of mad death.

Matthew Tomkinson is a writer, sound designer, and doctoral student in Theatre Studies at the University of British Columbia. His research explores the material, political, and psychological dimensions of sound within the Deaf, Disability, and Mad arts. Matthew’s music for dance and theatre has been presented at a number of festivals including PuSh, Vines, New Works, Dance in Vancouver, and Dancing on the Edge. His debut collection of short prose, Archaic Torso of Gumby, co-authored with Geoffrey Morrison, is out with Gordon Hill Press as of March 2020, and his chapbook, For a Long Time, is available at Frog Hollow Press. An upcoming chapbook, oems, will be published by Guernica Editions in 2022.

Diane Kolin is a M.A. candidate in Musicology in York University, Toronto, Canada. Her research interests are diverse and include Disability Studies, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Liszt. The study of Beethoven’s deafness and her personal history led her to her research in disability and music.

Kaiti Shelton, MT-BC, is a practicing Board-Certified Music Therapist and candidate in the graduate music therapy program at Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis. Her emerging research interests include perception of disability, internalized ableism among disabled music therapists, and the experiences of bereaved adults with intellectual disabilities in music therapy.

Isolte Avila was born in Cuba and trained with the Cuban ballet and members of the Alvyn Ailey Dance Company. She has a degree in dance from California Institute of the Arts. She is the founder of the art form 'Signdance Theatre' and original pioneer of signdance™ created in 1987. Isolte has developed the movement for all of the company's pioneering and award-winning performances. In 2001 Isolte formed Signdance Collective with Welsh actor David Bower. She has worked most notably with choreographers Ismael Ivo, Ornella D'Agostino, Lloyd Newson, Donald McKayle, Gus Solomon and recently with Kate Lawrence. Isolte is an international performer, collaborator and movement director at the Signdance Collective.

Rob Corcoran is a filmmaker and creative producer from Wrexham, North Wales. He is the founder of production company 73 Degree Films and has produced numerous film, arts and community projects. He is currently a member of the BFI NETWORK x BAFTA Crew. In 2017 Rob founded the non-profit arm of 73 and has also been recognised for his social entrepreneurship, in particular for projects focussed on helping people from North Wales enter the film industry. He is an UnLtd Award Winner and Social Business Wales Awards nominee. Rob has worked with SignDance Collective since 2018, collaborating on shows including 'The Turtle Trials' and 'In Between Spaces' which have been developed and showcased internationally, including in Slovenia, Austria, Turkey, USA and Mexico. Rob is a BAFTA Cymru member and producer of the FOCUS Wales Film Festival, supported by Ffilm Cymru.

Caroline Blumer is a Ph.D. student in Music Education at Western University. Since 2008, Caroline has been working with individuals with disabilities, especially on the Autistic Spectrum within inclusive musical settings in Brazil. In Canada, she is engaged as a volunteer and researcher with inclusive musical programs at L’Arche Community and Dreams Come True Music Studio in London, ON.

Pablo V. Marquine is a Brazilian musicologist, pianist, and composer. Pablo is currently doing a Ph.D. in Musicology at the University of Florida, where he researches the intersections between politics and aesthetics in the Brazilian music modernism. Pablo has expanded a recent research about disability and music.