Joshua St Pierre (PhD) is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta, Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Critical Disability Studies, and Principle Investigator of the Stuttering Commons. Dr. St. Pierre’s research seeks to make interventions on both theoretical and practical fronts. Working at the intersection of dysfluency studies, critical disability studies, and contemporary political theory, his research focuses on the interplay of communication and disability within information societies. His work also seeks to conceptualize and generate resources for radically accessible and hospitable communicative practices. His first monograph is titled Cheap Talk: Disability and the Politics of Communication, published by University of Michigan Press. He is an avid gardener.
Maria Stuart is Assistant Professor in American Literature at University College Dublin where she teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and Crime Fiction. As a person who stammers, her recent research is in the emerging field of Dysfluency Studies (which has learnt much from the work of scholars and activists within Disability Studies). Her own work focuses on literary/cultural representations of stammering, the poetics of dysfluency, and rewriting cultural narratives of dysfluency. She was PI for Wellcome project: ‘Metaphoric Stammers and Embodied Speakers: connecting clinical, cultural and creative practice in the area of dysfluent speech’ (2019-2022), and is collaborator/co-director of Stuttering Commons (funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada).
Daniel Martin is an Associate Professor of English at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He teaches courses in essay composition, Victorian literature, literary and critical theory, film and media studies, and dysfluency studies. His research explores nineteenth-century literary, medical, and cultural representations and expressions of stuttered speech.
Sam Simpson is a speech and language therapist, person-centred counsellor, supervisor and trainer living outside London, England. Sam has a particular interest in critical disability studies, stammering activism and what stammering can teach us about ourselves and the world. Sam actively promotes stammering-affirming therapy practices and culture. Together with Patrick Campbell and Chris Constantino, Sam co-edited Stammering Pride and Prejudice: Difference not Defect in 2019.
Christopher Constantino, OFS, lives in Tallahassee with his wife, Megan, and three sons, Augustine, Sebastian and Maximilian. He is a speech-language pathologist and assistant professor at Florida State University. He works clinically with people who stutter, supervises graduate student clinicians, teaches classes on stuttering and counseling, and researches ways to improve the experience of stuttering. He is the Professional Development Manager for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Special Interest Group for Counseling (SIG 20). He co-edited the book Stammering Pride & Prejudice with Patrick Campbell and Sam Simpson. Chris enjoys riding his bicycle.
Patrick Campbell is a stammerer, doctor and academic living in London, England. Patrick is an advocate for stammering and the rights of people who stammer. He co-edited the critically acclaimed book Stammering Pride and Prejudice and has contributed numerous blogs and articles on stammering. He has an interest in how public and self-stigma intertwine to produce disability for people who stammer and how this debilitating process can be altered through seeing positive value in stammering.
Conor Foran is an Irish artist and designer based in London. He runs a socially engaged design practice with his partner Bart Rzeznik called Take Courage. They combine creativity, technology and strong relationships with their collaborators to design printed matter, develop websites and manage projects for education, care and culture—including Stuttering Commons. As a proud person who stammers, Conor is interested in how disability intersects with creativity and how art and design can instigate social change. He leads a collaborative, creative practice about stammering called Dysfluent.
Bart Rzeznik (he/him) is a London-based designer and project manager by day, and a dedicated stammering ally by night. Alongside Conor Foran, he runs Take Courage, a creative practice committed to supporting Stuttering Commons by translating and sharing stammering knowledge. When not designing, Bart lectures part-time on project management and design thinking at Kingston University’s Department of Creative and Cultural Industries.
Danika Jorgensen-Skakum (she/her) is a queer and Métis PhD student in the University of Alberta's political science department. She received her MA in Gender and Social Justice (University of Alberta, Women and Gender Studies) and her BA in Women's and Gender Studies (University of Alberta). She is a Research Assistant for Stuttering Commons, and has been involved since the collective launched in 2022. Her current research interests include Indigenous relations, digital networks, infrastructure studies, posthumanism, material feminisms, critical disability studies, and (in)finitude. (Also muskrats.)
Hussain Alhussainy is an MA student in Political Science at the University of Alberta, funded by a SSHRC Master’s award. His research focuses on de-Westernizing disability studies through a post-colonial lens, examining how neocolonialism and Western legacies shape disability inclusion in the Middle East. He also works as a Research Assistant at the Stuttering Commons. A co-founder of the Council for Disability Cultures and Access, Hussain brings lived experience as a disabled student with cerebral palsy and a periodic stutter to his academic work. He is a recipient of the King Charles III Coronation Medal for outstanding service to Crown and country.
Megan Aiken is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Alberta. Her dissertation, Locked-in Language: Policy Legacies, Discourse, and Canada’s Historical “Opioid Problems,” 1908-2018, is a critical intervention in Canadian policy studies, focusing on the role of discourse in constructing policy problems, target populations, and the implications for citizenship and belonging. Her broad research interests lie in health and social policy, and the role of ideas in the policy process. She currently lives in Toronto with her fiancé and three cats.
Maddie Dempsey is an MA student in Political Science at the University of Alberta, currently working on her thesis, researching the socio-personal impacts of late autism diagnosis amongst women and queer folk, rooted in her own experience of being diagnosed with autism at 24. Maddie’s interest in critical disability studies began in Dr. Joshua St. Pierre’s virtual classroom in 2021, resonating with the affinity for community care and mutual aid that a crip identity embodied. Maddie is not a stutterer. She is hyper-verbal, often speaking too much, too fast, to loudly without noticing, and is currently exploring how this type of speech fits into the realm of dysfluency.