Lydia X. Z. Brown (they/them) is a feminist disability studies and critical legal studies scholar. Brown's work addresses the deep interconnections between ableism and other forms of systemic discrimination, marginalization, and oppression, and has often focused on interpersonal, state, and corporate violence, deprivation, and exploitation targeting disabled people at the margins of the margins. Their current research interests include carcerality and institutional violence; asexuality as queerness; algorithmic harm as an accelerating force of systemic injustice; and the ableism-racism nexus of transracial and transnational adoption. Brown has recent publications in FUTURE/PRESENT: Arts in a Changing America, Autism in Adulthood, The American Journal of Law and Medicine, Critical Sociology, Critical Studies in Education, and Disability Studies Quarterly. Brown has also served as teaching faculty at American University, the University of Delaware, and Tufts University.
As an internationally recognized disability policy expert, Brown is director of public policy at the National Disability Institute, which works to advance economic opportunity and freedom for people with disabilities, and formerly director of policy and advocacy at the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network, the leading organization working at the nexus of neurodiversity, gender justice, and disability justice. Brown also founded The Autistic People of Color Fund, which advocates for disability, racial, and economic justice with a focus on building generative economies and just transition while providing mutual aid, peer support, and community-funded reparations. Brown serves as immediate past president and vice chair of the Disability Rights Bar Association and as a member of the National Lawyers Guild’s National Executive Committee, and was a past member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights. They were formerly an associate for disability rights and algorithmic fairness at the Georgetown Law Institute for Tech Law & Policy and a policy counsel for privacy and data at the Center for Democracy & Technology, where they co-led the nation's only project focused on disability rights and AI. Brown was also a former Justice Catalyst Fellow at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, where they advocated for students with disabilities in education civil rights matters.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Assistant Teaching Professor, College - Disability Studies