Call for Applications: Disability History Association Conference Award
The Disability History Association invites applications for our Conference Award. This award is intended to help cover costs for attending virtual and in-person conferences.
Eligibility: This award is open to graduate students and contingent faculty, as well as underemployed, unemployed, or community-based scholars and artists. The DHA is particularly interested in supporting those who will receive limited or no support from other sources, including their home institutions. Previous winners may apply again, but the lifetime award maximum is $500.
Applicants must be presenting on a topic directly related to disability history.
This award can be used to help cover costs for conferences attended between April 1, 2024 and September 30, 2024. Eligible conferences may be either in-person or virtual. The award may cover travel (transportation and accommodation; please note that food and per diems are not eligible), conference registration, or the cost of academic memberships required to attend the conference. Depending on demand, demonstrated need, and the availability of funds, award amounts may range from $100 to $500 (US dollars).
Criteria: Applications are adjudicated based on a combination of demonstrated financial need and the significance of conference attendance for the applicant’s career and the advancement of the field.
Application Materials: Applicants must write a letter of between 1-2 pages describing what conference they will be attending, the nature of their participation in the conference, and the significance of conference attendance for their career and the advancement of the field. They should also include a brief budget (in US dollars) indicating expected costs, and how the award will help them cover these costs. If they are applying for or have received other funds to help defray the cost of attendance, applicants should indicate this in their letter or budget.
By May 15, 2024 please submit applications to the Disability History Association via Tulika Singh at tulika2@ualberta.ca. Questions can be sent to DHA Director of Awards, Jenifer Barclay, at barclay7@buffalo.edu.
Conference award winners agree to retain receipts for their expenses for six months in case of an audit. Winners also agree to provide a brief report about their conference for the DHA’s website and/or newsletter or, if appropriate, a longer contribution for the DHA’s podcast or blog.
Award Winners
Note that this award was previously known as the Graduate Student Travel Award.
Winter 2022 Award Winner
Hannah Zaves-Greene, a PhD candidate at New York University, organized a panel entitled “Lost in Translation: Fractured Bridges in 20th-Century American Jewish Culture” for the American Jewish Historical Society meeting. She also presented a paper exploring intersections of disability and Jewish immigration in US history.
Read Hannah’s report.
Fall 2021 Award Winners
Sam Brady presented a paper entitled “‘A small leap for disabled man’: The athlete-led evolution of the sports wheelchair and adaptive sports” at the British Society for Sport in History conference in August 2021, where it won the inaugural Sporting Inequalities Prize for the best paper on an under-researched area of sport history. Read Sam’s report.
Yakov Ellenbogen presented a paper entitled “Cut Off from His People? Circumcision, Disability and Marginality in Medieval Ashkenaz” at the American Jewish Studies conference in December 2021.
2019 Graduate Student Award Winner
Gregory Carrier (University of Alberta) presented a paper entitled “Augustine and Aquinas on Modern Disability Theory” and participated in the roundtable “Medieval Disability and Pedagogy” at the 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies held in Kalamazoo, MI, May 9-12, 2019.
2018 Graduate Student Award Winner
Evan Sullivan, a doctoral candidate from the University at Albany (SUNY), presented a paper entitled “Better Speech for Better Americans” at the “No End to War: Cultures of Violence and Care in the Aftermath of the First World War” conference at the University of Manchester.
Read Evan’s report.
2017 Graduate Student Award Winner
Jacqueline Pruder St. Antoine (doctoral candidate, Eastern Michigan University, US) presented a paper at the American Association of Educational Studies. Her talk was entitled “Inedible Mushrooms in the Wood: Oppressive Hierarchy in Mad Studies and EcoJustice Education.” Read her report: “Passing the Hemlocks: The Power of Sharing Truths.”
2016 Graduate Student Award Winner
Haley Gienow-McConnell (doctoral candidate, York University, Toronto, CA) was a featured speaker at Brock University’s (St. Catharines, Ontario) Department of History Speaker Series on October 28, 2016.
2015 Graduate Student Award Winners
Rabia Belt (doctoral candidate, University of Michigan, US), gave a paper entitled “Ballots for Bullets: Disabled Civil War Veterans and the Right to Vote.” She also presented on a roundtable on the state of the field of disability history at the Organization of American Historians conference in St. Louis, Missouri in April 2015.
Haley Gienow-McConnell (doctoral candidate, York University, Toronto, CA) will present a paper entitled “Representations of Historical Disability on The Waltons, 1936-1945, 1972-1981” at the “Rethinking Disability on Screen Symposium” in York, UK in May 2015.
Mary Mendoza (doctoral candidate, UC-Davis, US) will be giving a presentation entitled “La Tierra Pica/The Soil Bites: Hazardous Environments and the Degeneration of Bracero Health, 1942-64” at the Society for Disability Studies conference in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2015.
Congratulations to all three fine students. We can look forward to reading more about each awardee’s work and travels on this website.
