Dr. Rua M. Williams is an Assistant Professor of User Experience Design at Purdue University in Indiana, USA. They are a Just Tech Fellow with the Social Science Research Council, where they are investigating disabled people’s bodily autonomy and social agency through adaptive and assistive technologies. Dr. Williams is the Principal Investigator for the Coliberation Lab, which studies interactions between technology design, technology research practices, and Disability Justice. Common approaches to technology and service design for marginalized people tend to naturalize existing inequities, exacerbating injustice even while they attempt to ameliorate it. Dr. Williams deploys Feminist and Anti-Racist approaches to Technoscience, Critical disability Studies, and Science and Technology Studies in the design and evaluation of sociotechnical systems. Through their scholarship they illustrate injustice in technology while simultaneously uplifting marginalized users’ own practices of resistance.
