October 23, 2026
11th Annual Ecoability Conference
Building a global ecoability movement intersecting disability, animals, and the environment for justice, advocacy, peace, and liberation.
Family Friendly – Zoom – Free – Public
Register Here:
Co-Chairs:
Laura Schleifer, Jen Salerno, and Anthony J. Nocella II
Introduction and Welcoming Remarks – 3:00pm
Jennifer Salerno and and Laura Schleifer
Biography: Jennifer Salerno is an early childhood educator and child advocate based in Baltimore, Maryland. Grounded in critical pedagogy, her work attempts to disrupt dominant ideologies and foster critical thinking, collective empowerment, and social transformation. Jennifer’s educational practice employs an emergent pedagogy that aims to reimagine ability, community, and interdependence with the natural world. As a doctoral candidate at Antioch University, Jennifer utilizes a transdisciplinary framework—drawing on ecoability, posthumanism, and transformative learning theory—to challenge normative notions of ability and independence. Her research strives to advance an ethic of interdependence that recognizes the entangled relationships between human and more-than-human beings in the pursuit of social, disability, and environmental justice.
Biography: Laura Schleifer is a lifelong ‘artivist’, or artist-activist. An NYU Tisch graduate (BFA, Drama), she’s toured the Middle East, performing for Palestinian and Iraqi refugee children with the Boomchucka theater/circus troupe, taught in China, Nicaragua, and at Wesleyan University’s Green Street Arts Center, performed off-Broadway, and arts-mentored NYC homeless/targeted youth. Her original screenplay, The Feral Child, was a Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab finalist. Her essays appear in New Politics Magazine, The Leftist Review, Forca Vegan, The New Engagement, and multiple anthologies, including Kropotkin Now! Life, Freedom and Ethics, published by Black Rose Books, Resisting Neoliberal Schooling; Dismantling the Rubricization and Corporatization of Higher Education and Expanding the Critical Animal Studies Imagination; Essays in Solidarity and Total Liberation both published by Peter Lang Publishing, and Fever Spores; William S. Burroughs and Queer Letters, published by Rebel Satori Press. Laura is also Program Chair at Promoting Enduring Peace (https://pepeace.org/), a historic U.S. peace organization, and co-founder of Plant the Land (www.planttheland.org) , a Palestinian-led vegan food justice/community projects mutual aid team in Gaza.
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