Project Description
The Disabled Anthropologist Oral History Project (DAOHP) documents the lived experiences, insights, and practices of disabled, chronically ill, Deaf, mad, and neurodivergent anthropologists and interdisciplinary ethnographers who have already obtained a PhD. Started in 2021 by co-PIs Erin L. Durban, Sumi Colligan, and O. Sailer, there have been over two dozen participants from Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Project Researchers
Erin L. Durban (on right) is an associate professor of anthropology and critical disability studies at the University of Minnesota. Durban is currently working on their second book manuscript, "Enabling Ethnography: Crafting Anti-Ableist Fieldwork Methods" (under contract with University of Minnesota Press).
Sumi Colligan (center front) is a Professor Emeritus of anthropology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She is a first generation disabled anthropologist with a PhD from Princeton. Sumi has conducted fieldwork in Israel, Turkey, and online. She is the co-editor of The Disabled Anthropologist
O. Sailer (on left) earned a bachelor’s degree in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Minnesota. Their senior honors thesis won the top prize for undergraduate theses from the UMN Department of Anthropology.
Participant Invitations
We are writing to inquire about whether you would be interested in being interviewed for our research project exploring the experiences of disabled, chronically ill, and mad sociocultural anthropologists and ethnographers.
About the project:
As disabled and chronically ill sociocultural anthropologists and interdisciplinary ethnographers at various stages of our careers, we are interested in connecting with other scholars and learning about their education, fieldwork, and careers. Here are some of our hopes for the project:
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Create a record of the experiences and contributions of individual disabled and chronically ill anthropologists and ethnographers;
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Share the knowledge with each other in that everyone who participates will have the option to access the materials from the other interviews to collaboratively generate knowledge for ourselves and others;
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Explore the shared and diverse experiences of disabled and chronically ill anthropologists and the creative ways that we have engaged our work, potentially to publish as research articles (with permission from interviewees);
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Connect with disabled and chronically ill sociocultural anthropologists on the way towards forming a support network, like the Disabled Archaeologists Network. We are going to have an initial meeting this spring that we are organizing through a listserv that you are welcome to join whether or not you want to be part of the project.
In general, we've been meeting over Zoom with interviewees 2-3 times, since we're trying to keep interviews to an hour and a half for accessibility on our end.
We are open to a variety of formats and configurations for the interviews, based on what would be most accessible for everyone. If you are interested, let us know if there is anything we can do to make the interview more accessible to you, such as sending questions in advance, scheduling breaks, etc.