Beginning February 2026, SFA formally established a partnership with the UC Berkeley Disabled Ecologies Lab (DE Lab) to expand the fields of folklife and disability studies using Disability Justice principles as a core tool of analysis within already established cultural communities. The partnership is supported by a three-year Mellon Foundation grant establishing two DE Lab satellites — one at the Shelterwood Collective in Sonoma County, and the other here in Tucson.
Though tied together by shared goals and a Disabled Ecologies framework, the three sites are intentionally distinct — each with its own ecology, community, and institutional context. That diversity is a strength, providing varied settings from which to demonstrate that disability plays a vital, too-often underexamined role in the environmental arena: whether the legacy of contamination, the impact of extreme weather, or the historical exclusion of disinvested-in communities from nature and the outdoors, disability is always part of the story.”
UC Berkeley
DE Lab — Main Campus
Directed by Dr. Sunaura Taylor
Graduate students in an academic community using disability as a lens in ecological scholarship, grounded in environmental humanities and disability studies.
Tucson, AZ
DE Satellite — Southwest
Directed by Alisha Vasquez
An intergenerational urban community living with the impacts of historic water contamination, working across environmental and cultural organizations in Southern Arizona.
Sonoma County, CA
DE Satellite — Shelterwood
Directed by Yomi Young
A 900-acre forest stewarded by Black and Indigenous queer people — at a different but deepening stage of development within the initiative.