Project Team

Kelly Fritsch

Kelly Fritsch is Canada Research Chair in Disability, Health, and Social Justice and Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University. Her research investigates disability as a dynamic and generative site of tension that both shapes, and is shaped by, social structures, institutional practices, and cultural imaginaries, illuminating how the frictions and possibilities of disability reconfigure collective life and broader formations of justice. She is the author of We Move Together (2021), an award-winning children’s book about ableism, accessibility, and disability culture, and editor of Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canada (2022) and Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle (2016). Her most recent book, Broken Worlds, Disabled Kin: Strategies for Collective Survival (2026), charts a politics of solidarity with which to build a more life-supporting world. Fritsch also serves as editor of the UBC Press Disability Culture and Politics series, sits on the editorial board of Disability Studies Quarterly, and is co-host of Disability Disruptions, a documentary podcast about the past, present, and future of disability justice in action.

Fady Shanouda

Fady is an assistant professor in the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation at Carleton University, with cross-appointments in the departments of Anthropology and Sociology and Architecture, and Urbanism. His interdisciplinary work intersects Disability, Mad, and Fat Studies and critically examines how human and non-human assemblages come to constitute certain bodyminds as problems. It includes socio-historical examinations that surface the interconnections of colonialism, racism, ableism, sanism, and fatphobia. He has published scholarly articles on Canadian disability history, various disability and mad-related topics in higher education, and the impacts of fatphobia both digitally (online and via apps) and physically (medical testing and long-term care facilities). His current SSHRC-funded project, “Fat Chair: Thickening Design Standards through Fat Studies,” builds on this work and aims to challenge exclusionary design paradigms that shape much of the built environment. It will explore how “thickened design”—developed through collaborative design builds with fat people—can improve access to public spaces for this community. 

He is deeply committed to justice-oriented and accessible pedagogy, a focus explored in a recently published co-edited anthology, Troubles Online: Ableism and Access in Higher Education (2025), which challenges the assumption that online learning spaces are inherently more accessible than in-person ones. Within the ableist and sanist university environment, he works closely with students and faculty collaborators to support students’ success and well-being, including co-developing Mind the Gaps: A Survival Guide for Graduate Students.
His research and teaching are grounded in a commitment to bridging academic and community worlds. He created and hosts the podcast Disability Saves the World, where activists, scholars, and artists explore how crip, mad, and fat perspectives, activism, and art can transform society. To support this commitment to the field, he also serves as co-editor of the Disability Culture and Politics Series at UBC Press.