Dr. Lauren Shallish is a community-engaged scholar researching disability studies and higher education. She currently serves as Associate Department Chair of Urban Education and Associate Professor of Disability Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. She is an affiliated faculty member in the Africana Studies Department.
Dr. Shallish’s research examines the hyper-labeling of multiply-minoritized students and how constructs of ability and dis/ability are framed in higher education equity work. She currently serves a member of Teaching Against Erasure, the Active Voice research team, NJ-STEP faculty, and principal investigator for The Troublemaker Project, a student-led collective that teaches disability studies in urban high schools.
In 2022, she was awarded the Chancellor’s SEED Grant for her work to establish the first disability studies program at Rutgers University and received honorable mention in the Pulitzer Center’s Inaugural 1619 Education Network.
Recent examples of scholarly work have appeared in DisCrit Expanded (2022), Women’s Reproductive Health (2022), SPARK Magazine— in partnership with Medium (2020), and Disability & Society (2021).
Her forthcoming book project on Disability and DEI will be published in late 2024.