Elizabeth de Poy

Elizabeth De Poy

Elizabeth DePoy is a theorist, researcher who is best known for her work in methods of inquiry, legitimacy theory, &, and disjunture theory. Co-authored with Stephen Gilson, DePoy developed Explanatory Legitimacy Theory. Through that lens, DePoy analyzes how population group membership is assigned, is based on political purpose, and is met with formal responses that serve both intentionally and unintentionally to perpetuate segregation, economic status quo, and inter-group tension. Co-authored with Gilson, Disjuncture Theory explains disability as an interactive “ill-fit” between bodies (broadly defined) and environments (broadly defined).

DePoy's life experience synthesized with breadth and depth of interdisciplinary thought has created an important theoretical advancements in disability, diversity and humanness studies . This frame of reference has served as the basis for her work and has been acknowledged as a new paradigm for disability studies by many scholars in the field (4) and disjuncture theory.

Her research in disability studies and the advancement of disability as diversity, through which she applies the lens of Explanatory Legitimacy Theory and Disjuncture Theory has been supported from federal and foundation sources in excess of eight million dollars . Most recently, DePoy has expanded her work to examine how impaired bodies illuminate values that challenge the boundaries of humanness. Along with her co-author, Gilson, she has suggested that embodied impairment can be thought of as a violation of humanness, begetting responses of revision, reinvention or denial.

DePoy's work has earned numerous awards including:

• Senior Scholar Award, Society for Disability Studies, June 2009.

• Elected to The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, University of Maine, April 2009.

• Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award, American Public Health Association, October 2008.

• Faculty Fellowship Summer Institute in Israel, Society for Peace in the Middle East, Summer, 2008. Sponsored by Bar-Ilan University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Jewish National Fund, Media Watch International, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East

• University of Maine, Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award, May 2007.

• Outstanding Achievement Award, Association of University Centers on Disability, November 2006.

• Allan Meyers Award for Scholarship in Disability, American Public Health Association, September 2005

• Fulbright Senior Specialist Scholar, Grant awarded to Assuit University, Assuit, Egypt, March, 2003

• Feminist Scholarship Award-Council on Social Work Education, March 2000.

In her initial book on disability theoryRethinking Disability (2004), and more recent work, Disability as Disjuncture (2011), DePoy, with co-author Gilson, takes on the essentialist nature of current diversity categories with a particular focus on disability, laying bare the value foundation and political and economic purpose of “disability category” assignment and social, professional and community response. Her subsequent works, co-authored with Gilson, include The Human Experience (2007), Human Behavior Theory and Applications (2012) and selected essays and papers. This scholarship applies legitimacy theory to understanding theories of human description and explanation and their purposive, political use in diverse “helping professional” and engineering worlds.

In her most recent writing in press, DePoy, with co-author Gilson, applies design theory and practice to the analysis of diversity categories, their membership, and their maintenance. She asserts that current approaches to understanding and responding to diversity are grand narratives that advantage the market and professional economy while perpetuating difference and inter-group struggle, truncating social justice and limiting equality of opportunity.

Most recently, applying this theoretical synthesis to healing disjuncture, DePoy has engaged in a collaborative research agenda with Gilson and Vince Caccese, applying engineering and robotic science to the creation of juncture. Her most recent innovations involve prototyping and testing service and fitness robotic devices and she is proposing to use social robotics to augment and render clinical health practices accessible to many who are currently excluded.

With Gilson, DePoy is examining how campus architectures, images, and cultural campus policies affect juncture and participation in the intellectual enterprise.

DePoy is currently professor of Interdisciplinary Disability Studies, Social Work, and cooperating faculty in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maine and a principle in ASTOS Innovations, a non-profit corporation devoted to improving equality of access to community resources in local, national, and global environments. ASTOS Innovations designs and develops model access solutions. DePoy also holds the position of Senior Research Fellow. Ono Academic College . Research Institute for Health and Medical Professions. Kiryat Ono, Israel.