Jess Dillard-Wright

Jess Dillard-Wright, PhD, MA, RN, CNM (she/they) lives, works, and plays in Western Massachusetts. She/they are white, fat, genderqueer, queer, and disabled assistant professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst Elaine Marieb College of Nursing. Jess is an affiliate of the University of Massachusetts IALS Center for Personalized Health Monitoring, co-leading the ethics arm of a collaborative research thrust, Health Tech for the People. She/they are also a 2023 Public Interest Technology (PIT@UMass) fellow working with a team of transdisciplinary collaborators in thinking about communicating complex ideas, the use of black boxed technologies in/as healthcare and for health, and new material/care ethics in accountable and community-focused ways, focused on reproductive health and death care. Jess was the 2021/22 fellow for the University of California Irvine Center for Nursing Philosophy. Jess also serves on the American Nurses Association Ethics Advisory Board. She/they work in collaboration with folks across the country and around the world to first imagine and then build worlds that are just, equitable, sustainable. Examples of this work include Nursing Mutual Aid, Call to Action for Health+Liberation alternate nurses week actions, and an ongoing community with the Compost Collaborative. More about Jess’s visions for a collective future can be found in Nursing a Radical Imagination: Moving from Theory and History to Action and Alternate Futures, an anthology she/they co-edited published by Routledge.