Committee

Amit Ahuja (Chair) 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.

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.

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.

Renee Edwards is an Assistant Director at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Her research focuses on disability, employment, accessibility, and equity, with particular interests in the experiences of people with disabilities in professional and institutional settings. She has conducted research on the experiences of political scientists with disabilities and on barriers to accessible and equitable participation in the discipline. Edwards holds a Ph.D. in political science and serves on APSA’s Committee on the Status of Disability in the Profession.  

Dr. Jennifer M. Gagnon (she/they) (PhD, Political Science, University of Minnesota, BA, UBC) is a Lecturer in the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media. She is the creator and President of UBC’s Disability Affinity Group which works towards the goals of community care and Disability Justice (https://disabilityaffinitygroup.ubc.ca). She was the EDI Scholar in Residence with UBC Library for 2025/2026 and served on UBC’s Accessibility Committee 2023-2026. She has taught in a wide range of programs including Academic Writing, Classics, International Education, Equity and Inclusion, Political Science, Violence Prevention, and more. Her research is interdisciplinary and embraces topics in Disability Studies, political theory, qualitative methods, accessible healthcare, substance use disorders and disability rights, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), feminism, and gender. As a scholar in Disability Studies, her research focuses on academic ableism, gender, intersectionality, and Disability Justice. She is the PI for the Disabled Voices Project which aims to surface the narrative experiences of Disabled people in post-secondary settings. As an advocate, she leads workshops on Disability Justice, accessibility, consent culture, safer supply, and 2SLGBTQIA+ inclusion. She is a recipient of the 2021 Killam Teaching Prize at UBC which recognizes excellence in teaching innovation. Dr. Gagnon identifies as a bisexual settler and Disabled person, and strives to bring her whole self to her advocacy, teaching and research. She is also a board member with Heeling Assistants Canada, which provides professional-quality service dog training to disabled people raising and training their own service dogs. (Photo credit: Felicia Byron: @feb3ageebiez @studiofeb3a_to)

Ann Heffernan