Fiona Kumari Campbell

Fiona Kumari Campbell (born 1963) is a disability studies researcher and theorist, focusing on disability in relation to law, technology, advocacy, and desire. She is currently Professor of Disability and Ableism Studies in the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Dundee, Scotland and adjunct professor in Disability Studies with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. She is the author of Contours of Ableism. Fiona Kumari Campbell was born in Melbourne, Australia, to a family of Scottish and Sri Lankan-Jewish descent and identifies as biracial/Asian. Her early ideas about difference and the politics of race were developed by her own early childhood experiences of growing up under Australia's White Australia policy and the treatment of her Asian mother. Although her father died at the age of 33 when Campbell was nine years old, his preoccupations with the Classics, theology, philosophy, and socialist politics left an indelible impression on her learning and understanding of the world. Campbell had an uneven education, leaving home at sixteen and eventually finishing her final Higher School Certificate at the Croydon High Evening School in 1980 under the tutelage of Dr. Norman W. Saffin, who also schooled Australian sociologist Peter Beilharz and Marxist-Feminist researcher Dr. Patricia Morrigan. Campbell, is an incomplete quadriplegic and experiences other chronic illnesses. She has focused on the consequences of discrimination and social oppression. Campbell is a scholar of disability studies, sociology, cultural studies, and legal theory, all of which can be found in much of her published cross-disciplinary research. Campbell's writing relates to issues of philosophy, Buddhism, disability, Sri Lankan disability, law, technology, and marginality. Campbell attended La Trobe University between 1987 and 1998, where she received a 1st Class BLS (Hons) in Law and Sociology.