Nick Winges-Yanez, Ph.D., LMSW

Nick Winges-Yanez, Ph.D., LMSW, is an assistant professor of instruction at the Texas Center for Disability Studies (TCDS) through the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin. She is the coordinator for the Critical Disability Studies program, teaching courses and facilitating programming.  Nick holds a master’s and a PhD in social work from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, her home for fifteen years prior to moving to Austin to be closer to her parents and her sister. As a sibling to someone labeled with ID, she is interested in creating a community for other adult siblings.

Her research interests include critical discourse analysis specifically in the realm of intellectual disability.

Her past research included sexuality and intellectual/developmental disabilities, sexuality education, and the intersections of the NASW Code of Ethics and person-centered practices.

She is a queer crip feminist activist-scholar interested in critical discourse analysis and how language, signs, and symbols create and perpetuate our realities.  Her work also interrogates histories of disability in relation to sexuality, citizenship, and trauma.