Committee

Monica C. Schneider (Chair) is the Paul Rejai Professor of Political Science at Miami University, located in Oxford, Ohio. Her research and teaching interests include American politics, gender, caregiving, and disability politics and policy. Her research has appeared in Political Psychology, Health Affairs, Politics, Groups and Identities, and the Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy, among others. Schneider is also a founding member of the Gender and Political Psychology Group, which organizes mentoring conferences for research and teaching that uses a psychological approach to study gender.

Amber Knight, Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, earned her B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research generally focuses on contemporary political theory, critical disability studies, and feminist political thought. She has published several articles on disability in political science journals, including The Journal of Politics and Politics, Groups, and Identities, among other outlets. In addition, her book– Prenatal Genetic Testing, Abortion, and Disability Justice (Oxford University Press, 2023), co-authored with Dr. Joshua Miller– was awarded Honorable Mention for the Alison Piepmeier Book Prize for the National Women’s Studies Association.

Art Blaser is Professor Emeritus of Peace & Justice Studies and Political Science at Chapman University in Orange; California where he co-founded and co-directed the Disability Studies minor. His scholarly interests include international law, mass atrocity, human rights, and disability law and policy. His articles have appeared in Human Rights Quarterly, the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, New Political Science, Disability Studies Quarterly, Peace Review, and elsewhere. He is on the editorial review boards of Disability Studies Quarterly and New Political Science.  

Rachel Blum is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of How the Tea Party Captured the GOP: Insurgent Factions in American Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2020) and Cooperating Factions (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Her work on political parties, group dynamics, and congressional communication, has appeared in multiple journals, including the British Journal of Political Science and Political Science Research & Methods. Her current research focus is on disability and the politics of ableism. She seeks to understand the prevalence of ableism in the mass public, the determinants of support for disability accommodations, and the impact of information about a candidate’s disability on voters’ perceptions.

Amit Ahuja is an Associate Professor of Political Science at University of California, Santa Barbara where he lives with his guide dog Empress, a yellow Labrador retriever. Amit grew up in India. He majored in Economics at the St. Stephen’s College at the University of Delhi. For graduate study, Amit attended the University of London as a Felix Scholar and then University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he received his Ph.D. in Political Science. His research focuses on the processes of inclusion and exclusion in multiethnic societies. He has studied this within the context of ethnic parties and movements, military organization, intercaste marriage, and skin color preferences in South Asia. He is the author of Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties without Ethnic Movements and coeditor of Internal Security in India: Violence, Order, and the State, both published by Oxford University Press.

Lisa Schur is Professor and past Chair of the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University, where she teaches employment law and labor studies.  She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California-Berkeley and a J.D. from Northeastern University. Her research focuses on the economic, political, and social inclusion of people with disabilities, particularly their political participation and employment experiences and outcomes.  In addition to publishing in peer-reviewed journals, she wrote an invited White Paper on Disability and Voting for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, and co-authored the book People with Disabilities: Sidelined or Mainstreamed? published by Cambridge University Press. 

Jennifer L. Erkulwater is a professor of political science at the University of Richmond and a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. Her scholarship and teaching interests center on U.S. politics, economic and social inequality, the American welfare state, and disability politics and policy. In addition to several articles and books chapters, Dr. Erkulwater has written two books on disability policy and politics, Disability Rights and the American Social Safety Net (Cornell University Press, 2006) and Medicating Kids: ADHD and Pediatric Mental Health (Harvard University Press, 2009), co-authored Dr. Rick Mayes and Dr. Catherine Bagwell, with a third book on disability and race politics forthcoming.