Emer Lucey

Emer Lucey is an historian of American medicine and disability whose work focuses on childhood developmental disability in the recent past. Dr. Lucey draws upon medical history and disability history interventions to explore the construction of authority, meaning, and identity for disability self-advocates, parents and family members, and professionals. Her book project, The Making of a Disability: Autism and Down Syndrome in American History (under contract with Columbia University Press), examines the formation of medical and popular understandings, experiences, and narratives of childhood disability since the Second World War through the entwined histories of autism and Down syndrome. She is the co-author with Michael Yudell of A Way of Being Human: Autism in Science and Society (under contract with Columbia University Press), which examines how the history of autism illuminates contemporary debates in autism research, treatment, and advocacy. In 2020, she received the Shryock Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine. Her writing has appeared in The Drift and Nursing Clio. She received a Ph.D. in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.