2024-2025 PROUD Fellowship Recipients

[Image Description: A waist-up portrait of Ness smiling gently into the camera, arms crossed against their chest. They are white-bodied with short hair blonde hair, buzzed on the sides. They are wearing wearing a navy blue t-shirt with a tattoo slightly visible on their upper left arm. They are wearing small gold hoop earrings and a watch on their left hand against a backfrop of green bushes and tree leaves.]

Ness Maloney

Ness Maloney is a PhD candidate in Socio-Cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto who has conducted ethnographic research with disabled self-advocates and care services in the Cook Islands, as well as past projects in New Zealand and Tonga. Their current work traces how networks of care are carved out within global flows of power, people, and money, and how these care economies unevenly shape disability experiences globally. This work draws on critical disability studies and feminist theories of care to explore how disabled people negotiate care within the constraints of global capitalism and neocolonialism. Ness is particularly interested in how the prevalence of disabled care-giving and mutual care, especially in the Cook Islands, complicates dominant notions of care and (inter)dependency.

[Image Description: A photo of Walter, a Filipino-Cuban Canadian man with short curly brown hair, from the chest up. He is wearing a blue short-sleeved collared shirt with embroidered eyelets and a thick golden Cuban link chain around his neck. Smiling meekly and squinting into the camera, he is captured against a backdrop of the ocean with mountains and clouds slightly visible behind him.]

Walter Rafael Villanueva (he/him)

Walter Rafael Villanueva is a Mad-identifying scholar. He is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and holds research positions at the Centre for Global Disability Studies and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. His doctoral research explores Asian Canadian narratives of madness and, in particular, how Asian Canadian writers use storytelling as a counter or supplement to formal psychiatric diagnosis. He is currently working on an autoethnography that details his mother’s journey as Filipina care worker in Canada who later develops vascular dementia and returns to the Philippines to make amends with her family, her relationship with whom had become fractured after she became disabled. Enmeshed within his mother’s story is his experience being her Mad primary caregiver. His activism both on and off campus focuses on anti-racism and de-stigmatizing mental illness. He has been involved in projects and initiatives focusing on highlighting the innovation and resilience of racialized communities during the COVID-19 pandemic and improving access to non-biomedical community resources and supports to those experiencing psychiatric distress.

[Image Description: Close-up colour portrait of Keegan smiling. They are a white-bodied non-binary person and have long, curly brown hair with bangs. Two piercings on the right side of their lip and one in the bridge of their nose. He is wearing a grey, navy blue and white striped sweater.]

Keegan James (he/they)

Keegan is a first year Master of Information Student with the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto and holds a diploma in Indigenous Community and Social Development from Georgian College and a Bachelor of Social Work from Toronto Metropolitain University. They have over a decade in international, national and grassroots Pride organizing experience (President of Fierte Simcoe Pride from 2020 – 2021, Regional Representative for Ontario with Fierte Canada Pride from 2020 – 2021, Regional Representative for Canada with InterPride from 2019 – 2020, and the Secretary of Fierte Simcoe Pride from 2017 – 2020). He has founded multiple community events that still occur annually (Annual Winter Feast, Trans March). From 2021 – 2024, Keegan was a Program Coordinator with a federally funded 2S-LGBTQ+ inclusion education program, developing workshops and providing virtual training to over 20,000 individuals. They are currently the lead and co-founder of the In Love and Leather Community Archive- a grassroots, queer/trans initiative dedicated to processing the personal collections of queer and trans older adults and elders. Since July 2024 he has been the Centre Coordinator for the Centre for Global Disability Studies, an interdisciplinary center of disability studies scholarship based out of the University of Toronto. He currently lives in downtown Toronto with his partner, three cats and a rapidly increasing collection of nordicware cookie stamps.

[Image Description: A self-portrait of Kayla smiling into the camera. They are a white-bodied person and have long, straight red hair. They have one nose piercing. They are wearing a navy blue collared shirt with white polkadots.]

Kayla Saunders (she/her)

Kayla Saunders is a second-year student in the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program at the University of Toronto. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Gender and Women’s Studies from York University, where she was first introduced to critical disability studies. As a student and researcher with disabilities, Kayla has developed a strong passion for disability justice and inclusive education.
In 2022, Kayla received York University’s Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (DARE) for her project, Unmasking Violence: Artists Imagining Finer Futurities, which curated a bibliography of over 250 resources by Indigenous artists in Canada from the 21st century. More recently, her research has centred around disability justice. Her current project, Diversifying Scholarly Conversations About Functional Seizures: Where Critical Disability and Information Social Justice Intertwine, merges her interests in information literacy with her lived experience, aiming to foster more equitable scholarship for individuals living with functional seizures, like herself.

[Image Description: A waist-up colour portrait of Matthew looking into the camera. He has short, dark brown hair and facial hair. He is wearing a black, yellow, and white plaid button down with the sleeved cuffed at his elbows. He stands in front of greenery, blurred in the background.]

Matthew Palynchuk (he/him)

Matthew Palynchuk is a PhD candidate in Political Theory and works in contemporary, Anglo-American political philosophy. In particular, his work focuses on disability and what social movements for disability justice can contribute to philosophical debates around egalitarian justice. His work has been published in publications such as Social Theory and Practice, the Journal of Applied Philosophy, and the Journal of Moral Philosophy. Palynchuk did his BA and MA in philosophy from Concordia University and another MA in Biomedical Ethics from McGill University.