Earlier this year, the Center welcomed the first cohort of Research Assistants (RAs) to join our Mellon-funded Access for Small Arts Partnerships (ASAP) grant. At the heart of ASAP are the innovative access initiatives happening at NYC’s small arts organizations. These projects form a growing edge of possibilities for creative, curatorial, and archival approaches to accessibility. ASAP is about building feasible pathways to the emergent cultural access workforce. To do that, we are supporting NYU students to work on access projects that arts organizations are forging but don’t otherwise have the capacity to grow. As students enter difficult job markets

The NYU Center for Disability Studies is happy to welcome two Fulbright fellows in disability arts for the 2025/2026 academic year. You can read more about their work below. Júlia Ayerbe is a Spanish-Brazilian contemporary art researcher. Her work focused on dissident corporealities, accessibility, and publishing practices. She is a PhD student in the Art History Department at Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a Visiting Researcher at NYU Center of Disability Studies through a Fulbright fellowship. Her doctoral research examines the practices of the Latin American artists Anita Malfatti, Lorenza Böttner, and Nazareth Pacheco through the methodological and theoretical frameworks

Photo by Cassidy Duhon. Gotkin will contribute to NYU’s disability-centered research, teaching, and partnerships. Following a national search, the NYU Center for Disability Studies (CDS) has hired scholar, organizer, and artist Kevin Gotkin as its inaugural Assistant Director. Gotkin has been a member of the NYU community since 2007 when they began their undergraduate studies in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication (MCC). While completing their doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, Gotkin was adjunct faculty at NYU and served as one of CDS’s first part-time administrators. After receiving their Ph.D. in 2018, they were a Visiting Assistant

Kevin Gotkin has been dialed into disability worlds since 2012 as an access ecologist, teacher, writer, artist, and scholar. Before joining the Center for Disability Studies as a Postdoctoral Fellow in September 2025, they led disability economic justice initiatives as Artist-Organizer with Creatives Rebuild New York. From 2016 – 2019, they helped cultivate a broad platform for disability artistry across the public, cultural, and philanthropic sectors in New York City as Co-Founder of Disability/Arts/NYC with Simi Linton. Kevin received their Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018 and was a Visiting Assistant Professor in NYU’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication