Friday, April 11th, 2025 at 9:00am-2:00 pm ET
Lindner Family Commons, Elliott School of International Affairs
and Online
About the event:
Come join the GW Institute for Korean Studies, alongside the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Taiwan Education & Research Program, and the East Asia National Resource Center, for a signature conference featuring experts on Disability Rights in East Asia’s democracies on Friday, April 11th from 9:00am-2:00pm! A light breakfast and lunch will be provided for conference participants.
This event will highlight cutting-edge research in the growing legal and social scientific scholarship on disabilities in East Asia’s democracies. Speakers will discuss a range of topics, including (but not limited to) the development of laws related to persons with disabilities; disparities across disability categories; the role of regulations and technology in the employment of people with disabilities; the enfranchisement of persons with intellectual disabilities; the gendered division of labor for care; and the intersection of globalized concepts of rights with local disability politics.
About the Speakers
Celeste Arrington is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in Sociology; senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center since 2005; and the founding director of the Korea Program since 2001, all at Stanford University. As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.
Chang Heng-hao is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and currently serves as the Dean of the College of Social Sciences at National Taipei University, Taiwan. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and is the founding president of the Taiwan Society for Disability Studies. His research focuses on the disability rights movement, representations of disability, and inclusive education. He serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Disability and Social Justice and guest edits the special issue “Disability in East Asia.” His work has been published in Disability & Society, Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, Taiwanese Sociology and Taiwanese Journal of Sociology. He also co-edited a book, Disability Studies: Theories and Policy Implication, which introduces Disability Studies to Chinese language.
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Satoshi Kawashima is a professor of disability law and an advisor to the president of the Open University of Japan. He received a Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree from Niigata University in 2005. After being an Okayama University of Science professor, he moved to the Open University of Japan in 2023. He has published over 50 articles on disability law and disability studies in Japanese and is a contributor to and/or co-editor of over 30 academic books in Japan. He is a board member of the Japanese Society of Disability Law, the Japan Society for Disability Studies, the International Human Rights Law Association of Japan, and the Association on Higher Education and Disability of Japan. He is a member of several committees of governmental and semi-governmental organizations.
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Sooyeun Lee has been working as a public interest attorney in the field of human rights in Korea since 2019. She majored in education in college, so she is very interested in the right to education and is working to ensure the right to education for children and youth with disabilities, remedy discrimination, and amend relevant laws. As a public interest lawyer, she is mainly engaged in litigation, law reform, and international solidarity activities. She has worked on cases of discrimination against persons with disabilities and has worked to change laws related to the right to vote and education. In international solidarity activities, she participated as a member of civil society in the deliberations of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2022 and the Human Rights Committee in 2023. Currently, she works for a NGO called NOW (Network for Organizing and Widening pro bono activities), which not only works in the field of disability rights, but also supports networking for public interest lawyers and promotes public interest lawyering in Korea.
Mayuko Maeda is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the George Washington University. Her research interests include disability rights movements, transnational activism, and Japanese politics. Currently, she is working on a project examining the voting rights of people with cognitive disabilities around the world. She is from Tokyo, Japan, and received her BA in Political Science and Russian from Grinnell College.
Reiko Nishida earned her Ph.D. in Law from the University of Tsukuba, Japan. Currently, she is a junior researcher at the Institute of Comparative Law at Waseda University, supported by a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) grant for FY 2023-2025. Her research focuses on comparative equality and anti-discrimination, including affirmative action to promote equal employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities, women, and foreign workers. She has expertise in anti-discrimination laws in both the U.S. and Japan. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, where she continues her research.
