Meet the faculty and teaching assistants for DSROI 2025

Niluka Gunawardena is an educator, researcher, and disability rights advocate based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Kelaniya and a curriculum developer at the University of Colombo. She has an MA in Disability and Gender from the University of Leeds, UK. She serves on the Board of Women Enabled International and the advisory panels of ARROW, LIRNEasia, and HYPE Sri Lanka. Niluka is an alumnus of DSROI 2011 and has been on the DSROI teaching team since 2019. She has worked as a disability consultant/ trainer for a range of organizations including CREA, UAF, WFA, MAS, and IFES among others.

Nelly Bassily is a queer disability justice advocate and intersectional feminist, anti-racism, and sexual rights activist and media maker with more than 15 years of experience in the non-profit sector. Born in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal to Egyptian parents with Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian roots; immigration, diaspora, and decoloniality also inform her activism. In 2021, she received the Top 25 Women of Influence award. Her biggest and most important challenge to date is being the mother of 3-year-old baby girl whom she loves with all her heart!

Ruby Loretta (they/them) is a gender diverse, neurodivergent feminist disability rights activist, creative strategist, and the cofounder and Executive Director of the Diverse Empowerment Foundation (DEF), Uganda’s first and only grassroots, disability led LGBTQ+ organization. At DEF, Ruby leads pioneering work that bridges disability justice, queer liberation, and feminist organizing, placing the lived realities of LGBTQ+ persons with disabilities at the center of transformative change.

Under Ruby’s leadership, DEF has built an intergenerational, cross movement team that is 70 percent queer, developing inclusive programming rooted in healing, access, and collective power. From policy advocacy to grassroots organizing, Ruby’s approach combines strategic vision with radical tenderness and community care.

A self-taught animated advocacy designer, Ruby uses AI, illustration, and accessible digital media to tell stories that move hearts and change systems. Their graphic and visual storytelling has become a powerful tool in global disability justice campaigns. Most recently, Ruby led the design and creative strategy behind Disability Pride Month 2025, a global campaign that united over 250 organizations, individuals, and communities to celebrate intersectional pride, inclusive joy, and resistance.

Ruby’s trailblazing leadership and creative advocacy have earned them multiple honors including the YALI TOT alum recognition, SMUG Quchu Leadership Academy Leader of the Year, and the 2023 LGBTQ History Month Rainbow Warrior Diploma Award. Their initiatives have directly impacted over 200 LGBTQIA+ individuals and persons with disabilities across Uganda and beyond, fostering healing, visibility, and opportunity in communities too often left behind.

In addition to their work at DEF, Ruby also serves as the Inter Organizational Relations Director at the Wawa Aba Institute, a pan African faith rooted leadership institute that advances gender equity through theological education, political engagement, and social justice organizing.

Shamim (pronouns: She|Her|Herz) is a young Queer Muslim disabled feminist and a human rights activist. She is an intersectional feminist and continuously create spaces for young women, women with disabilities, lesbians, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTIQ+) persons. Shamim’s work is centered on sexuality, religion and disability justice. Shamim is the founder of henna space; an organizing for Queer Muslim Women and Queer Disabled folks creating visibility and advocacy on intersectionality, sexuality, religion and disability. Shamim’s work on disability justice is centered on bodily autonomy and integrity; and that disabled folks are diverse, living and affected by different forms of marginalization. She is also a champion for inclusive and affirming faith spaces. Shamim is also invested in resource young feminist organizing to support their work on pushing back on repressive systems.

Sonaksha is a fat, queer, chronically ill, and disabled illustrator, graphic recorder and book designer. They use art to participate in building social justice movements and work with organizations defending human rights and the environment. Sonaksha is currently dreaming and drawing about disability justice, care, fat liberation, and queerness while living in Bangalore, where they are often found in the aisles of bookstores, or eating paint. You can find their work at https://sonaksha.com/.

Janet Price is an activist, artist, and occasional academic, who is committed to engaging with the intersections of disability, sexuality, gender and race/heritage, intellectually and practically, through the creation of strong links of friendship that build on shared interests and politics. She hopes to create art that can extend histories of connection & resistance, incorporating queer/crip politics and the climate emergency. In partnership with others, including from Nigeria, India, Kenya, and Australia, she was involved from 2010 in initiating and developing DSROI. She has been on the Board of Disability and Deaf Arts (DaDa), Liverpool which holds a biennial International Festival, DaDaFest, and she continues to be actively involved in Disability/Deaf Arts. She loves being in open spaces and is a keen gardener.

Phylis Mbeke is the Executive Director of Women Spaces Africa, a feminist disability-led organization focused on improving access to information and services related to Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). With 14 years of experience advocating for SRHR at the grassroots level, Phylis’ work emphasizes the need for inclusive participation of girls and women with disabilities in decision-making and programming. She recognizes the double marginalization they face due to both gender and disability stereotypes.

Phylis’ contributions have earned her global recognition, including being named a Global Health Award winner and a Radical Love Fellow in 2023. She is also a member of the Innovators Council at Grand Challenges Canada for 2024. She strongly believes in the importance of a community-centered approach in shaping policy and is actively engaged in both regional and international conventions.

Dwi Ariyani is the Regional Head of Programs- Asia for the Disability Rights Fund and the Disability Rights Advocacy Fund. Dwi is a disability rights activist. Dwi has worked for over twenty years in Indonesia on disability rights and movement building. She has worked with grassroots and national organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs) to promote persons with disabilities rights and provide technical assistance for OPDs and work with them to achieve their advocacy agenda through; legislation reform and budgetary advocacy, building a bridge across the movement. As a woman with a disability herself, Dwi has also advocated for the empowerment of women with disabilities and ensures that women with disabilities are heard in every decision-making process that affects women's lives. She received the 2020 Women of Distinction Award- NGO CSW New York.

Faith Njahîra Wangarî (She/Her/Hers) is a feminist scholar-activist, researcher and disability inclusion expert with muscular dystrophy committed to research and community work guided by disability justice, feminism and anti-ableism. She’s an independent disability consultant who supports global and national organisations in their inclusion of persons with disabilities in programming, grant-making. She has published book chapters on disability and has guest lectured in university classrooms in the US and Ireland on disability. Njahira is a graduate of Syracuse University’s Disability rights and Inclusive education Master’s program with additional training and research in inclusive education, disability law and inclusion in Kenya, Japan and South Africa. Her experience spans across international non-profit, community organising, consulting and academia.

Dative Mukashema is a 2021 DSROI alumni, Executive Director, and deputy legal representative of Rwanda National Association of Deaf Women (RNADW “Umucyo”), a feminist deaf women organization since 2020 that advocates and promotes the rights of deaf women and girls in Rwanda. She came in at a time when the OPD was experiencing acute management gaps and has since turned around its fortunes. Before joining RNADW Dative worked as a special needs education facilitator for the learners who are deaf in the refugee camps with ADRA International- She has a passion for deaf refugees and internally displaced deaf because she was born in a refugee camp in Uganda. Astute, focused, and determined to tackle the challenges facing deaf women and girls, she is profoundly deaf and became deaf at the age of 2 years due to a disease called meningitis. Dativa is a graduate of Development Studies. Growing up in a large family with boys as well as girls, she learned to fight for her rights. Her supportive parents made this easy as they stood by her in every sense, enabling her to complete her studies even when facilities were few.

Nidhi Ashok Goyal is the founder and executive director of the leading Award-winning non-profit organisation Rising Flame, working for the leadership and rights of women, youth, and persons with disabilities in India. She has been working on disability rights and gender justice for the past 12 years at the national, regional, and global levels through research, writing, policy influence, and art.

She was instrumental in establishing a separate focussed space for disability in the Civil 20 process in G20's presidency of India, where she worked across 20 + countries to mainstream persons with disabilities and was the youngest and the only disabled person on the steering committee of Civil 20 an official engagement group of G20.

She serves on the core group of persons with disabilities by the National Human Rights Commission India, has been invited on the diversity and inclusion task force of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, is the governing body member of ADD India, and sits on the advisory board of Voice- a grant-making project by the Dutch ministry. She has led multistakeholder and cross-movement work, influenced policies and systems, and authored groundbreaking research, all with a vision to foster inclusion of women and youth with disabilities within India and globally across four continents and in over 20 countries. She has steered a leading global women's rights organisation – AWID- as the youngest and first-ever disabled president and made huge strides in inclusion as the former global advisor to UN Women's Executive Director. Her leadership and work have been appreciated and awarded by the government of India, Indira University, the National Association for the Blind, ABP News and Sur Optimist Mumbai, amongst others. Her journey and successes have been written about and covered in National and global media. Lastly, she is India's first female disabled comedian, using humour to challenge popular misconceptions of gender and disability. You can follow her work @saysnidhigoyal.

Srinidhi is a disabled feminist, researcher, educator, and writer. She works at the intersections of sexuality, gender, disability, and technology. She supported the coordination of Feminist Internet Research Network’s research undertaken between 2022 and 2023. She is co-lead, programmes at a feminist-disability rights organisation, Rising Flame. Her work for the past 12 years has focused on deepening conversations around sexuality, on understanding how technology and accessibility intersect, on imagining a feminist internet, on rights of persons with disabilities, and building more spaces where disabled people can thrive. She has conducted trainings, undertaken and coordinated feminist research and built programmes on sexuality, leadership, digital access, security and usage, violence against women with disabilities, sexual and reproductive health, and media representation of children and disabled people

Agness Chindimba, is a feminist, women rights and disability rights advocate with over 15 years working with girls and women with disabilities on GBV/SRHR and Disability Justice. She is passionate about issues affecting women and girls with disabilities in the Global South. Her work has earned her the Gender Champions award from the Dutch Embassy in Harare, an alumni of the prestigious DSROI offered by CREA and the Mandela Washington Fellowship, YALI- Young Africa Leaders Initiative of President Barrack Obama. Agness enjoys researching on the intersections of disability, and gender and has published with the likes of Routledge as a contributor to book chapters.

Debarati (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, neurodivergent feminist practitioner based in India whose work sits in the intersections of digital technologies, gender, sexuality, and disability. Their work centers women, queer and trans persons, and disabled individuals' experiences of online harms and freedoms. Currently, they're an independent consultant working primarily in two areas: independent technology research to hold large tech power to account, and archiving of Southern feminist knowledge to inform South feminist activism.