معرفی
Kelly Fritsch is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, cross-appointed to the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation and the Institute of Political Economy. Her research focuses on critical disability studies, crip theory, and disability justice, aiming to transform ableist social relations through anti-assimilationist disability culture and politics that mobilize disability's generative frictions for accessibility and social justice.
Her educational background includes a Ph.D. in Social and Political Thought from York University and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto's Women & Gender Studies Institute.
Fritsch's research explores intersections of disability with technology, criminalization, and medical systems, emphasizing crip technoscience, disability justice movements, and temporal dimensions in transplant medicine. She examines how disability is oppressed through carceral systems and neoliberal biopolitics while investigating artistic and sensory methodologies for transformative change. Her work consistently centers disabled community knowledge and anti-assimilationist politics.
Analysis of her recent publications reveals a trajectory toward interdisciplinary collaboration in health humanities and STS, with growing emphasis on sensory ethnography and arts-based methods in transplant contexts. Key themes include temporal frictions in medical futurity, cripping drug use epistemologies, and decarceral disability justice frameworks across Canadian contexts.
Her scientific recognition includes:
- Research Achievement Award, Carleton University (2023)
- Harriet McBryde Johnson Award for Nonfiction (2022)
- International Latino Book Award for Best Educational Children's Picture Book (2022)
- Carleton University Early Career Research Award (2020)
Fritsch leads major funded projects including an SSHRC Insight Grant mapping Disability Justice in Canada, a New Frontiers in Research Fund project on transplant medicine frictions, and an SSHRC Knowledge Mobilization Grant for 'A Broken Politics for a Disabled World.' She collaborates on gender/sexuality pedagogy research and co-edits UBC Press's Disability Culture and Politics Series while serving on Disability Studies Quarterly's editorial board.
Her collaborative work involves interdisciplinary teams using sensory ethnography and arts-based methods, particularly through the Frictions of Futurity project examining transplant medicine through crip technoscience lenses. These initiatives integrate community partners to mobilize knowledge for disability justice movements and accessible futures.
