Dr. Jen Rinaldi is a socio-legal scholar who uses critical arts-informed and participatory action research methods to study violence against persons with non-normative embodiments. Through a research collective she co-founded called Recounting Huronia, she mobilized scholars, students, artists, and intellectually disabled institutional survivors to document survivor-centric histories of institutionalization. Among the collective’s accomplishments, Dr. Rinaldi co-produced two books on the structural conditions that produce institutional violence, an open-access digital archive on the legacy of an Ontario-based institution, and a speakers’ bureau that enabled survivors to address audiences across Canada.

As a founding member, Lead Social Scientist, and Advisory Committee Chair of the Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Dr. Rinaldi leads research that seeks disability justice through:

1) documenting histories of institutional violence,

2) assessing discrimination in clinical encounters,

3) strategizing abolition and deinstitutionalization.

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