Cat Fischer

I am a PhD researcher in Philosophy and based at the Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. My thesis investigates disability, especially disabled embodiment and disability technologies, through a phenomenological and crip/queer lens.

My research interests are primarily in the areas of phenomenology especially with regards to disability, illness, psychopathology, embodiment, emotions and feminist issues. I also work a lot at the intersections of philosophy, social theory and medical humanities.

I have a background in philosophy, social sciences and psychology - which has left me really interested in interdisciplinary research! Following my BA degree in Philosophy, Sociology and Psychology at the University of Exeter, I went to University College Dublin for my MA in Philosophy, specialising in Consciousness and Embodiment.

Research Project:

I'm interested in the relations of bodies to themselves, each other, and socio-material environments. My PhD project brings together phenomenological and crip, queer, feminist methods to investigate the lived embodied experience of disability. I have a particular focus on prostheses, and queer/crip uses of technology, appendages and environments.

I approach diability technologies as a double-edged sword: on the one hand, they are rooted in medicalised understandings of disability that disabled people have to be 'cured' or made to look 'normal'. On the other hand, prostheses highlight the artifice and permeability of the body, and they can be very useful. A nuanced understanding of disability and technology has to be mindful of all these dimensions.

My PhD has been funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of the 'Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures' project. 

Research Supervisory team:

My supervisors are Prof Luna Dolezal and Prof Joel Krueger.