Our Work
Announcing HPOD’s 2024-25 Annual Fellows and Visiting Scholar
Projects will tackle climate justice, institutionalization, self-advocacy, legal capacity, and violence against women
HPOD's 2024-2025 cohort of annual fellows will explore pressing disability rights issues through scholarship, art, and advocacy.
Each year, HPOD invites outstanding individuals to participate in its annual fellows program and enrich HPOD’s efforts to strengthen civil society and empower all people to make the changes needed in their communities to promote disability human rights. The 2024-25 class of fellows will focus their talents and energies on an array of pressing issues regarding the history of institutionalization, disability climate justice, legal capacity, violence againts women, and self-advocacy.
Annual Fellows
Yaron Covo
Yaron Covo's award-winning research focuses on the intersection of disability law, health law, and private law. It includes an exploration of the surprising role that Alzheimer’s medication plays in private litigation, as well as a study showing how certain types of contracts—including job-sharing contracts and supported-decision-making agreements—constitute reasonable accommodations. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, Yale Law School and was previously a post-doctoral fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Tel Aviv University. He received his LL.M. and J.S.D from Columbia Law School, where he was a Fulbright fellow and James Kent Scholar, and his LL.B magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University. His HPOD annual fellowship activities will focus on analyzing the ways that courts invoke contract concepts and doctrine to fill gaps in disability rights statutes.
Alex Green
Alex Green studies the history of institutionalization of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and its relationship to contemporary human rights issues. He spearheaded the creation of the Massachusetts Special Commission on State Institutions, a first-of-its kind disability-led truth commission, where he serves as a member. From 2017-2020 he developed a nationally recognized community-focused and project-based high school disability history curriculum. His biography of Walter E. Fernald, the creator of special education, is slated for publication with Bellevue Press later this academic year. He teaches political communications at Harvard Kennedy School. His HPOD annual fellowship activities will focus on raising awareness of the implications of the history of disability, eugenics, public policy, education, and medicine in the 20th century for present day law- and policy-making.
Derek Heard
Derek Heard is an award-winning graphic artist, entrepreneur, public speaker, and disability justice advocate who happens to have autism. Based in Albany, Georgia, Derek believes in the power that images have in creating positive change and evoking emotions--a belief he makes real through Derek's Doodles. His art and entrepreneurship have earned him a Fannie Lou Hamer Leadership Fellowship, Easterseals' Annette Bowling Advocate of the Year Award, Synergies Work's Creativity Award, among other honors. More recently, he provided the graphics in HPOD's easy-to-read handbook for people with disabilities on climate change. His HPOD annual fellowship activities will focus on developing graphics aimed at helping HPOD to support self-advocates to get more involved in shadow reporting under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Christina White
Christina White is a Co-Director of the Systemic Justice Project at Harvard Law School and Fulbright Scholar from Australia. Her research explores the intersection of disability and mass incarceration. Before coming to Harvard, she worked as a Public Defender in the Northern Territory of Australia. She has advocated for disability rights in that role, as well as while working with other direct services organisations in Australia, including Redfern Legal Centre and the Australian Centre for Disability Law. She has also worked as a Judicial Clerk at the Supreme Court of New South Wales and as a Senior Solicitor at the Crown Solicitor’s Office in Sydney. She holds a B.A. (Hons)/LL.B. (Hons) from the University of Sydney and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School.
Visiting Scholar
Hong Qi
Hong Qi is currently a Lecturer at the China-EU School of Law at the China University of Political Science and Law. She also served as the Chinese Coordinator of the China-EU School of Law from 2008 to 2012. She teaches family law, nonprofit organization law and civil law. Her research interests mainly focus on issues of inequality in marriage, domestic violence, rights of women with mental health conditions, nonprofit organizations law and policy in China. Hong Qi received her Ph.D. of Law from the China University of Political Science and Law as well as an LL.M. from University of Virginia Law School. Her research focuses on the protection of women with psychosocial disabilities under Chinese law, with particular emphasis on their rights to be free from exploitation, violence, and abuse under the Chinese Civil Code.
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