Brian Heyburn

Meet Brian

Brian is originally from Louisville, Kentucky. His experience of living in the world with cerebral palsy as a queer man informs his work and advocacy. He has been in Chicago since 2012, when he moved to complete his MS in Disability and Human Development also at UIC. During his time in Chicago, Brian has worked as a Teaching Assistant at the Disability Resource Center and a Graduate Assistant at the Disability Cultural Center. In 2017, he was a Disability Lead fellow, in which he completed a leadership training fellowship with a cohort of other fellows to broaden their scope of influence and bring a disability perspective to increasingly more civic, public, and private contexts. Brian is also invested in artistic pursuits exploring his embodied experiences of disability and queerness through photography, writing, and performing.

Why did you choose DHD at UIC?
The DHD program at UIC offered the best chance to study the cultural, social, and political dynamics of disability in-depth within an interdisciplinary context. Chicago is also home to one of the largest disability arts and culture scenes in the country.

What do you want to do with a DHD degree?
To put my skills as a writer and communicator to work in building bridges between the academy and non-academic, disability-centric spaces.

Research Interests
The impairment-specific experiences and identities of writers with cerebral palsy who demonstrate a politicized orientation to disability, theorizing the ways in which the analysis of their work explores the tension found within a space of confounding boundaries and categories while at the same time holding steadfast to a politics of disability.

Education
MS, Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois-Chicago, 2014; BA, Religious Studies, Centre College, 2010