🌟 Presented by Inclusive Excellence (Advancing Mentoring and the Professoriate initiative)

The Office of Advancing Mentoring and the Professoriate presents

Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program Seminar Series featuring

Stephanie Keeney Parks, Ph.D.

Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow,
Department of African American Studies,
Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies,
University of California, Los Angeles

Beyond the Clinic, Beyond the Classroom: Black Families Rewriting Possibility in Autism Care

Across clinics and classrooms, Black families of autistic children encounter institutions that frequently misinterpret their advocacy and misrecognize their expertise. This keynote explores how families learn to “game the system” to secure the support their children need within settings shaped by racial and ableist assumptions. Grounded in ethnographic research, the talk reveals how structural violence unfolds through disproportionate discipline, reduced instructional access, pathologized cultural practices, and limited opportunities for collaborative decision-making. In turn, caregivers develop creative strategies that reimagine the home as a space of protection, learning, and resistance. Centering a critical race/disability lens, this keynote highlights the profound labor Black families perform to navigate discriminatory systems and invites audiences to envision possibilities for justice that honor disabled children and the families who fight for them.

Everyone interested is welcome. Lunch served.

About

Stephanie Keeney Parks, PhD, is a medical, psychological, and linguistic anthropologist whose research examines how race, disability, and structural inequality shape the lives of Black families navigating healthcare, special education, and social service systems. A Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA, her work integrates linguistic anthropology, medical anthropology, and critical disability studies to reveal how institutional bias and structural violence shape diagnostic encounters, educational pathways, and access to care. As a Black mother of an adult with autism, Keeney Parks brings both scholarly and lived expertise to her research, centering how Black families craft strategies of survival against unimaginable odds. She is committed to community-engaged research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and advancing anti-racist, anti-ableist, non-carceral approaches to disability care and justice.

Check out the other series seminars:

STEPHANIE SANDOVAL-PISTORIUS

Postdoctoral Scholar, Starr Lab, University of California, San Francisco

From Mutation to Modulation: Deep Brain Stimulation and Multiscale Dysfunction in Monogenic Parkinson’s Disease

February 18 • 12:00pm • 300 Aggie Square, Room 2220

Learn More

MARIA JOSE ECHEVERRIA LANDETA

Assistant Professor,  Civil Engineering, California State University, Sacramento
February 25 • 12:00pm • Student Community Center, Room D
More information soon.

MICHELLE VASQUEZ RUIZ

UC President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles
March 4 • 12:00pm • Student Community Center, Room D
More information soon.

DIEGO ELLIS SOTO

Postdoctoral Scholar, Environmental Science, Policy & Management, UC Berkeley
March 11 • 12:00pm • Student Community Center, Room D
More information soon.

DEBORAH SOUTHERN

Postdoctoral Scholar, School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
April 29 • 12:00pm • Student Community Center, Room D
More information soon.

OLUMAKINDE ADESIJIBOMI OGUNNAIKE

UC President's Postdoctoral Scholar, Physics, UC Berkeley
May 26 • 12:00pm • Student Community Center, Room D
More information soon.