Laura Mauldin
Sociology, University of Connecticut
Laura Mauldin's research draws from the fields of medical sociology, science and technology studies (STS), and disability studies. She uses ethnographic methods to show how individual experiences are situated within institutional structures and a larger sociocultural context. All of her research is concerned with how science, technology, and medicine shape contemporary life and is based on the contention that disability – like race, class, or gender - is a political and social category. Her aim is to give voice to the experiences of individuals and families who utilize healthcare services and/or medical technologies in order to show the ambivalent qualities of technoscientific change, the politics of disability and illness, and to suggest what healthcare policies or issues need to be further researched or improved.
Professor Mauldin attended the University of Texas at Austin (UT), where she majored in linguistics and focused on ASL for her thesis. She has also worked at the Texas School for the Blind in the deaf/blind department where she was trained in Orientation and Mobility and how to work with deaf/blind individuals. After graduating, she briefly entered the Interpreter Training Program at Austin Community College. But during the first semester there, she was accepted as a graduate student in ASL and Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University, which is the only liberal arts university for the deaf in the world and everything is conducted in ASL. As a Master's student, she also spent time in Bristol, UK as a visiting scholar in Deaf studies at the University of Bristol (sadly, the Deaf Studies Centre is now closed, but you can read about it here) and a summer completing the certificate in Sexuality, Culture and Society at the University of Amsterdam.
Mauldin entered the PhD program in Sociology at the Graduate Center - City University of New York (CUNY), where Barbara Katz Rothman chaired her dissertation committee. After finishing, she was invited to be a visiting professor for one year in the Science, Technology and Society department at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). She also taught an introduction to sociology course at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, which is housed within RIT. The following year, she returned to New York City and began her tenure track position at the University of Connecticut where she is jointly appointed in Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and Human Development/Family Studies, with an affiliation in the Department of Sociology.
Mauldin is currently developing new research projects related to spousal/partner caregiving, disability, and medical technologies. She still has interests in deaf-related topics. She is on the Board of Corporators for the American School for the Deaf and maintains her interpreting certification with the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. She is co-chair of the Disabilities Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems and active in the Disability and Society Section of the American Sociological Association. She is also affiliated with (or just a fan of!) a variety of other groups, initiatives and professional associations, such as the NYU Council for the Study of Disability, the Future of Disability Studies project at Columbia, the Well Spouse Association, the Center for LGBTQ Studies at CUNY, the Society for Social Studies of Science, Society for Disability Studies, American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, National Women's Studies Association, and Sociologists for Women in Society.
Working Group Affiliation