Rowan Maddox
Interdisciplinary disability researcher
Based at the University of Bergen, my research sits at the intersections of critical disability, trans, and neurodiversity studies. I examine how disability is mobilised within anti-gender movements, and how liberal frameworks construct “disability” as a regulatory category that shapes trans lives and healthcare access. Through critical inquiry, my work seeks to expose and challenge the political and institutional structures that govern embodiment, care, and social legitimacy.
© Rowan Maddox. All rights reserved.
About
I am a theorist specialising in disability studies, positioned at the conceptual intersections of feminist, trans, and critical race scholarship. My work contends that disability is fundamental to the structural organisation of society and our ontological understanding of humanity. Despite this significance, disability is frequently marginalised within broader academic discourses regarding political and social justice. Currently, my scholarship focuses on disability’s role in contemporary anti-trans mobilisations. I analyze how anti-gender movements exploit affective regimes of disability and examine how these tactics are rooted in historical liberal governance of human difference.
Selected Publications
Representationalism and the impossibility of autistic transgender identification. 2026. Culture, Theory and Critique.The ‘new’ trans population: An exploration of the uses and abuses of autism. 2025. European Journal of Women's Studies.The Centrality and Marginality of Disability: Tracing the Historical Contingencies of the (Mis)Uses of Autism in Anti-Trans Politics and Discourse. 2024. PhD Thesis.Reading Walter Benjamin with a Disability Lens: The Storyteller and The Mummerehlen. 2021. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies.
