Elan Tulberg

Elan Tulberg is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research explores the intersection of disability, race, and gender within the context of crisis and community. Her current project focuses on the survival of disabled Angelenos during the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025. This work inquires into the different modes of survival implemented by disabled survivors of natural disasters and seeks to innovate sociological understanding of climate crises and survivorship through the application of disability theory.

Her Master’s thesis "Are We Still Friends?: Understanding Disabled Women of Color’s Experiences with Friendship & Isolation During Covid" draws on interviews with 24 disabled and/or immnocompromised women of color about their experiences with their friends across the COVID-19 pandemic. This work is featured in an in-depth interview for SAGE Video’s Disability Collection, available here. Tulberg's advocacy for accessible scholarship is showcased through her past media projects, such as her documentary The Skirted White Man: Black Queer Culture’s Erasure in Fashion, featured for the University of California, Los Angeles' Gender Neutrality Project.

Tulberg's interest in intersectionally exploring how disabled people build or sustain community in times of crisis is rooted in her personal experience as a disabled queer researcher of color. With a devotion to care, her work speaks to communities with heightened vulnerability during times of crisis that have historically been overlooked and untended.