The Department of Sociology at Queen’s University is pleased to welcome Dr. Robel Abay as a Good Family Visiting Professor. During his fellowship, Dr. Abay will develop a new research project on Intersectional Disability Justice (IDJ), an innovative framework that examines how colonial systems of oppression shape experiences of disability, race, gender, and forced migration.
Dr. Abay is a Professor of Disability Studies at Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences Berlin. He previously worked as a research associate at Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany, and holds a PhD from Humboldt University of Berlin, where his doctoral research focused on the intersectional colonialities of racism and ableism. His research and teaching interests include disability studies, decolonial theory, critical race studies, technoableism, queer migration, gender and queer studies, climate justice, and participatory research.
At Queen’s, Dr. Abay’s IDJ project seeks to explore the multiple and shifting ways in which colonialism intersects with race, disability, gender, and forced migration that forms part of an intricate web of social conditions that subjugate certain dimensions of intersectional colonialities that need to be addressed through critical examination of the interlocking dynamics of colonialism. In doing so, IDJ critically analyses different manifestations of racialized and gendered ableism as explanatory factors that contribute to intersectional mechanisms of exclusion in educational and labour market outcomes as well as in societal and political participation. Through embedding the significance of grounding Intersectional Disability Justice within the broader scholarly debates on disability, gender, and race, it maps out the various dimensions of ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies of disability through the rich examination of recent theoretical and empirical engagements with intersectional colonialities.
For more information and to connect with Dr. Abay, you can reach him at robel.a@queensu.ca.