Elizabeth DePoy

Elizabeth DePoy is a disability theorist, professor of interdisciplinary disability studies, social work, and cooperating faculty in mechanical engineering at the University of Maine and also senior research fellow. Ono Academic College, Research Institute for Health and Medical Professions. Kiryat Ono, Israel.

She is best known for her work in methods of inquiry, legitimacy theory, and disjuncture theory. Co-authored with Stephen Gilson, DePoy developed Explanatory Legitimacy Theory. They analyze how population group membership is assigned, is based on political purpose, and is met with formal responses that serve both intentionally and unintentionally to perpetuate segregation, economic status quo, and inter-group tension. Disjuncture theory explains disability as task failure based on an interactive “ill-fit” between bodies (broadly defined) and environments (broadly defined). It always begins with a task that cannot be done thereby shifting the focus of disability from the body or hostile environment to failure to do a desired or needed task. In this manner, the binary of disabled-non-disabled is removed. Based on disjuncture theory and their 2014 book, DePoy and Gilson are now engaged in the development of non-stigmatizing mobility equipment. One of their innovations, Afari, has been part of the Access +Ability exhibit at the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Design Museum [https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/1158847061/] Most recently, DePoy has expanded her work to look at disability and alterity in general as a function of infrahumanization. Her 2022 book, co-authored with Stephen Gilson, proposes the concept of humanness literacy, a future vision of diversity belonging to all and in which essentialism is exposed as fractious and thus is eliminated. Provided by Wikipedia