Akemi Nishida
Associate Professor
Disability and Human Development
Gender and Women's Studies
Pronouns: She/Her/Her
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About
Akemi Nishida (she/her) uses research, education, and activism to investigate how ableism occurs in relation to racism, cis-heteropatriarchy, and other forms of social oppression. She also employs these methods to contribute to disability justice activism and scholarships on care.
Nishida is the author of Just Care: Messy Entanglements of Disability, Dependency, and Desire (Temple University Press, 2022), in which she examines public healthcare programs as well as grassroots interdependent care collectives and bed-space activism. This book examines how care is structurally utilized as a tool for social oppression within the neoliberal political economy, as much as marginalized communities engage in care to activate and sustain their social change work.
Her ongoing project, “We Survive Together,” theorizes disaster ableism, and its website offers accessible translations of disability-inclusive disaster research, testimonials from disabled survivors of disasters, and disability-relevant resources.
Nishida earned her Ph.D. in Critical Social Psychology from the City University of New York. Currently, she is an associate professor in Disability & Human Development and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago and a recipient of the UIC Community Engagement Award.
Her disability justice activism extends both locally and nationally. Locally, she was a member of a racial and disability justice grassroots organization in Chicago to pass the Community Emergency Services and Support Act as an alternative to calling police for people experiencing mental and behavioral health crises. Nationally, she is a research associate for Disability Project at Transgender Law Center and assists them in conducting the first national survey by and for disabled and trans people to document everyday ableism and transphobia.
Selected Grants
Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, UIC, Awards for Creative Activities, PI
Selected Publications
Just Care: Messy Entanglements of Disability, Dependency, and Desire
Critical Disability Practice in Manifestos for the Future of Critical Disability Studies
We survive together: Interviews with organizations fighting against disaster ableism and injustices: Part 1, Part 2, Parte 1, and Parte 2
Service to Community
Member of Advance Your Leadership Power, Chicago, IL
Research Associate for Disability Project, Transgender Law Center
Notable Honors
2025, UIC Community Engagement Award, The Offices of Faculty Affairs and Engagement, UIC
2020, Disability Mentoring Hall of Fame, National Disability Mentoring Coalition and Partners for Youth with Disabilities
Education
Ph.D. in Critical Social-Personality Psychology, Graduate Center, City University of New York