Award Highlights Impact on Disability and Communication

Mara Mills was recognized with the Jim Ferris Award for Outstanding Achievement in Disability and Communication during the National Communication Association (NCA) annual convention in New Orleans last week. Mills shares this year's award, generally considered the highest recognition given for Disability Research in Communication, with Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock. Recipients are selected by NCA's Disability Issues Caucus.

Mara Mills is Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication; founding co-director and current chair of the NYU Center for Disability Studies; a founding editor of the award-winning journal Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience; and a founding member of the steering committees for the NYU cross-school minors in Science and Society and Disability Studies. 

Mills received NYU's 2022 Distinguished Teaching Award in recognition of her exceptional contributions in the classroom. Her grant-supported research spans disability arts and technoscience, with a focus on the history, politics, and cultures of electronics and digital media.

With Rebecca Sanchez, she recently edited Crip Authorship: Disability as Method (NYU Press, 2023). With Harris Kornstein, Faye Ginsburg, and Rayna Rapp she is directing an NSF-funded project on Covid-19 and disability communities in New York, to result in an edited volume titled How to be Disabled in a Pandemic (NYU Press, forthcoming 2025).