Stella Palikarova

Stella Palikarova is a disability activist, international speaker, writer and filmmaker. She is the co-founder and co-director of Deliciously Disabled Consulting, a movement that seeks to create and promote frank discussion about the lived experience of disability by making accessibility more accessible to pop culture.

Stella also has over 15 years of experience in event planning and running seminars and workshops on disability-related themes including: sexuality, education, employment, personal support worker management, cross-platform physical and social accessibility, and women with disabilities.

Stella is currently completing her Masters of Information at the University of Toronto, with a background in Film and Psychology from York University (2007), having graduated summa cum laude. Her academic interests have always related to the intersecting experiences of disability, from her undergraduate thesis on the dating experiences of adolescent girls with congenital, physical disabilities, to her current thesis work on the ethical implications of cybernetic implants for people with disabilities. Forher paper "The Ethical Integration of Brain Machine Interfaces: Towards the Cyborgization of the Disabled" the latter, Stella received a Masters SSHRC and OGS.

"Maybe Tuesday" (2010), Stella Palikarova’s first film, is a 22-minute autobiographical dance dreamscape that fearlessly explores disability, sex, voyeurism and the search for love. This mashup of dance styles and musical genres (from techno to tango) evokes intense longing for physical perfection and romantic consummation, as it collides with the stark realities of living as a woman with a disability.

Most recently, Stella presented her candid paper, “The Hours Before ‘Goodbye’” on the loss of a romantic relationship at the International Conference on Disability and Diversity, London, United Kingdom, and this past June, 2015, she was a discussant and presenter at Congress, Ottawa for the Pleasures, Sexualities, and Disabilities: Desiring Identities conference. She also had the opportunity to present at Playground, 2016 sexuality conference in Toronto, and wass recently been invited to give a breakout workshop at the prestigious at the Pacific Rim International Conference on Disability and Diversity in Hawaii this spring.