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Kim Fernandes is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brown University. They hold a joint PhD with distinction in Anthropology and Education from the University of Pennsylvania, awarded in 2024, an MEd from Harvard University in 2014, and a BSc from Georgetown University in 2011. Prior to joining Brown, Fernandes completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto. Their research as a sociocultural anthropologist centers on disability, data, and technology, examining how assumptions about normalcy and the body interact with technological development and state infrastructures. This work focuses particularly on urban India through an ethnographic project on national enumeration and identification systems related to disability, as well as a new collaborative project on neurotechnologies and disability in North America.
Fernandes’s scholarship lies at the intersections of disability studies, science and technology studies, medical anthropology, and critical data studies. Their book project, Quantifying the Body: Disability, Data and Governance in Urban India, investigates how disabled individuals become legible to the state and the impacts on everyday life. Research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council and the Taraknath Das Foundation, among others, and the dissertation was a finalist for the 2025 Gail P. Kelly Award. Fernandes serves as Managing Editor of Platypus, an interdisciplinary science studies blog, and is an affiliate of Data & Society and the DISCO Network. They were recently elected to the Board of Directors of the Society for Disability Studies. Key publications include chapters and articles on topics such as disabled carework, inclusive education in India, and disability justice in HCI, appearing in venues like Routledge, Syracuse University Press, and various journals between 2020 and 2025.
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