Podcast Episode 44 – The Project on Women and Disability (PWD) and Women’s Health Activism in the Late Twentieth Century

The Disability History Association Podcast

Nora O’Neill, an MD/PhD student at Yale University, discusses her research on feminist disability activism in 1980s/1990s Boston.

Episode Image: A close-up photograph of a white t-shirt with a pink logo. In the center is the female sex symbol, a cross topped by a circle, which makes up the wheel of the wheelchair symbol that sits on top. The caption reads “Disabled Female and Proud.” This was a t-shirt found in the PWD’s archives and was likely worn by its members.

Download mp3 file here.
Download pdf transcript here.

About Our Guest

Nora O’Neill is an MD/PhD student at Yale University in the History of Science and Medicine Program. Prior to Yale she received her undergraduate degree in the History of Science at Harvard and completed an honors thesis on activism by women with disabilities in 1980s Boston, the project she discusses in this episode. Nora’s current research blends historical and sociological methods and explores the impact of patient activism on medical education in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She hopes to combine clinical care with teaching and research in the history of medicine in her future career as a physician-historian.