Sports and Society Lab

Amanda Apgar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Loyola Marymount University. Apgar’s scholarly work lay at the intersection of gender, disability, and childhood studies and the study of narrative. She is the author of The Disabled Child; Memoirs of a Normal Future (University of Michigan Press). Apgar holds a PhD in Gender Studies from UCLA, where she also taught and organized with UCLA’s Disability Studies program.

Molly is a researcher with a passion for disability community and adaptive athletics. When she sustained a disability as a teenager, adaptive sports communities helped her develop a joyful relationship to disability. She has participated in different adaptive sports, especially wheelchair basketball, which she played for over ten years, including a stint on the US Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Team. In 2015, she and Courtney Ryan co-founded Shield Maidens Wheelchair Basketball, which was the only women’s team in the state of California.

Her experience with adaptive sport nurtured her passion for disability, which she explored in her master’s and doctoral research. Her academic work has explored the way people make sense of impairments amongst others who are similarly perceived as disabled. She received her PhD in Anthropology from UCLA in 2020. Following graduate school, she transitioned to conducting users experience research in the software industry, where she is inspired by complexity of technology, especially providing access to people with disabilities.

Biography to come

I have been a member, a volunteer Mom and the program coordinator of FFDY, Foundation for Disabled Youths for fourteen years and became a board member in the last five years. I am passionate about the services, needs and voices of our special needs population. Our members are diagnosed with developmental delay either mentally or physically or both. Our children’s voices cannot be heard unless we speak for them, advocate for them and make them known.

Our group FFDY is a platform for social interaction which is, otherwise, very limited in our community. It is also a venue for resource exchange among the parents. Within the social/recreation model, I also believe that adaptive recreational sports should be accessible to all abilities, not only to the abled within the disabled participants. Moving forward, my goal as a board member is to represent our group to gain greater public awareness of our needs as well as to join forces with other partners in making disability recreational sports/activities to be enjoyed by all participants with different levels of disabilities.

Benjamin Lewis has been a lecturer in American Sign Language (ASL) at UCLA for over four years. As a fourth-generation Deaf individual and native ASL signer, he earned his BA in Communication Studies/Graphic Design in 2006 and his MA in Sign Language Teaching in 2012, both from Gallaudet University.

Benjamin’s experience extends internationally. From early 2007 to mid-2008, he taught ASL at the Japanese ASL Signers Society in Tokyo, where he authored basic ASL textbooks for local students and developed expertise in creating printed sign language materials. Following his time in Japan, he worked for a year and a half as a Communications Manager with Deaf Aotearoa in New Zealand. In winter 2014, he also delivered a TEDx talk at Gallaudet University.

Beyond his professional endeavors, Benjamin is an aviation enthusiast, world traveler, and video producer. He is dedicated to raising awareness about audism and cultural differences both within the Deaf community and between Deaf and hearing cultures. Benjamin’s teaching focuses on preserving ASL and Deaf culture, emphasizing that Deafness should be seen not as a disability, but as a rich language and culture.

I am a Ph.D. student in the School of Nursing at UCLA and a psych-mental health nurse practitioner. My research interest lies in the adulthood of individuals with Down Syndrome in their mental health, Alzheimer’s disease, and quality of life.

Atsushi Nakazawa, PhD, is Professor in the School of Sport Sciences, Waseda University, in Tokyo Japan. His research explores the social and historical relationships between education and sport, especially focusing on school sports in secondary education systems around the world, including Japan, the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom. His current research agenda concerns the embodied experience of disabled athletes and sport access and opportunity for children with disabilities.

Waseda University Researcher Bio

Nono is a current master’s student in the Department of Physical Education working in the Dance Lab at the University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan. Her research broadly explores street dance and its potentialities.

Nono has been dancing since she was six years old. She is currently a member of the professional dance team Posse, which is active in the Shizuoka, Japan, local street dance scene, garnering sponsorships and bookings based on their live performances. While at the University of Tsukuba, she continues to participate in both formal and informal street dance groups, learning about other local scenes in Japan.

At UCLA, she plans to conduct an ethnographic study investigating the equipment and apparel choices of breakdancers in Los Angeles, the site of the 2028 Olympic/Paralympic games. Her project aims to understand shoe preferences among competitive breakdancers, especially those with disabilities, leading to the prototyping of breakdancing-specific shoes based on this data combined with my previous work in Japan. This project is set within the context of the ways disability access and inclusion are central to future athletic performance goals for all athletes.

Read more about Nono Sasai.

Celina Shirazipour, PhD is a behavioral scientist. Her research is situated in the fields of health behavior change and sport and exercise psychology. In particular, her work explores how to optimize delivery of physical activity programming to promote long-term participation and psychosocial well-being for people living with physical and psychological illnesses and injuries resulting in the experience of disability. In addition, in collaboration with the Canadian Disability Participation Project, her research explores how physical activity can be a means to promote full participation of people with disabilities in their communities.

Gen Shogaki, bronze medalist in Para-Badminton World Championships and multi-medalists in the Asian Para Games as part of Team Japan.

Gen SHOGAKI 正垣源

• Japanese Para-Badminton Player, Standing Upper 5 class
• Member of National Team in Japan from 2011 to 2019
• Soccer for 9 years, Badminton for 15 years
• Master of Science

＜Biography＞

• 1995-2000 Koto elementary school, Nishinomiya boy’s soccer club
• 2000-2004 Koryo junior high school, Soccer club of Koryo junior high school
• 2004-2007 Nishinomiya high school, Badminton club of Nishinomiya high school
• 2007-2011 Faculty of science in Kobe University, Badminton club of Kobe University
• 2011-2013 Graduate school in Kobe University, Entering National Team of Para-Badminton
• 2013-2016.6 Center for Developmental Biology in RIKEN as administrative officer
• 2016.7- T-Point Japan as athlete of para-badminton
• 2016.7-2023.3 CCC MK HOLDINGS Co.,Ltd. as athlete of para-badminton
• 2023.4- Sports Field Co Ltd. as educational supporter for athlete