Shelley Lynn Tremain, Ph.D. (she/they/settler/disabled feminist killjoy)
Shelley Lynn Tremain holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from York University (Canada), has taught in Canada, the U.S., and Australia, and publishes on a range of topics, including: philosophy of disability, Michel Foucault, feminist philosophy, ableism in philosophy, social metaphysics and epistemology, and biopolitics/bioethics. From April 2015, Tremain has coordinated, edited, and produced Dialogues on Disability, the groundbreaking and critically acclaimed series of interviews that she is conducting with disabled philosophers and posts to BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY on the third Wednesday of each month. Tremain is the author of Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability (University of Michigan Press, 2017), the manuscript for which was awarded the 2016 Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities; the editor of two editions of Foucault and the Government of Disability (University of Michigan Press, 2005; 2015), the first of which has been translated into Korean; and the editor of The Bloomsbury Guide to Philosophy of Disability (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024). Shelley Tremain was also the 2016 recipient of the Tanis Doe Award for Disability Study and Culture in Canada; the Ed Roberts Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of California at Berkeley and the World Institute on Disability in Oakland, CA; and a Principal Investigator for Canada’s national policy research institute to promote the human rights of disabled people. She is Area Editor/Curator/Advisor for Philosophy and Theory of Disability of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Disability Studies (2026) and Oxford Bibliographies Online and has co-organized 6 editions of Philosophy, Disability, and Social Change, a multi-day international online conference that showcases philosophy of disability and disabled philosophers.
Melinda C. Hall, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Melinda C. Hall (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University) is Director of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida. Hall specializes in continental philosophy and the philosophy of disability, and regularly makes interventions in bioethics. Hall previously held academic appointments at Stetson University, including Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Philosophy. She also held leadership roles in multiple other programs and departments, including Community Education Project (Stetson’s higher education in prison program), Gender Studies, and Counselor Education. Dr. Hall is the author of multiple works of philosophy, including influential essays on disability and The Bioethics of Enhancement: Transhumanism, Disability, and Biopolitics (Lexington Books 2016). Her current book projects focus on the ethics and politics of risk and on claiming a disability history of philosophy. Dr. Hall’s work can be found in Disability Studies Quarterly, International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Philosophy Compass, and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, among other venues.
Axel Arturo Barceló Aspeitia Ph.D. (he/him/his)
Axel Arturo Barceló Aspeitia is a brown Mexican philosopher currently working at the National University of Mexico’s Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas [Institute for Philosophical Research] where he studies human representations (words, formulas, pictures, diagrams, etc.), especially in art and science. He got his Ph.D. at Indiana University, Bloomington. He was awarded the National University Recognition of Distinction Award for Young Researchers in the Humanities, and throughout his academic career, he has published two books and more than 40 journal articles and book chapters in Mexico and abroad. As an artist, Axel Arturo Barceló Aspeitia has been part of art collectives Konfort and Bios Ex Machina with whom he has exhibited and staged work in galleries and museums in Mexico, USA, Canada, and Portugal.
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Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril Ph.D. (she/her/elle)
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril is a crip French Canadian-Filipina hapa philosopher who successfully defended her doctoral thesis entitled, Autonomy as a Systemic Virtue: A Spinozist Analysis of Autonomy and Shared Decision-making in Healthcare, at the University of Aberdeen in June 2021. Her research interests include feminist approaches to bioethics, autonomy within asymmetrical power relations, affective management strategies, political and social philosophy, Filipino philosophy, as well as critical disability studies. She has co-authored a book chapter (“The Otherness within Us: Reframing, with Spinoza, the Self’s Relationship to Disability and Aging,” in Aging in an Aging Society: Critical Reflections, eds. Iva Apostolova and Monique Lanoix) and an article (“Care, the Self, and Masculinities: A Philosophical Perspective on Constructing Active Masculinities” in Feminist Philosophy Quarterly) with Iva Apostolova. In Spring 2021, Élaina was a teaching assistant at the University of Aberdeen for an undergraduate feminist philosophy course and a Master’s level course on values in public health within the School of Medicine.
Mich Ciurria (she/they)
Mich Ciurria (she/they) is a queer, disabled philosopher working primarily on critical disability theory, Marxist feminism, animal liberation and youth liberation. They completed their Ph.D. at York University in 2014 and subsequently held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Washington in St. Louis and the University of New South Wales. Dr. Ciurria has published over 20 papers in scholarly journals and edited volumes. Their most recent publications include “Speciesism is ableism is speciesism: A proposal for interspecies solidarity,” in Liberation at the End of Usefulness (co-edited by Ciurria); “UnKoch my philosophy department: A case study in billionaire philanthropy,” in The Journal of Academic Freedom; and “Responsibility and disability,” in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies (edited by Shelley Tremain). Dr. Ciurria believes that philosophers should not only interpret the world, but also change it, including by challenging eugenic apparatuses of power.
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