Staff

Genny Beemyn, Director (they/them): genny@umass.edu, www.gennyb.com

Genny Beemyn, Ph.D., was one of the country’s first out nonbinary college administrators and has been the director of the Stonewall Center since 2006. They also serve as the coordinator of Campus Pride’s Trans Policy Clearinghouse, through which they track college trans-inclusive policies and work with colleges to help them become more trans-supportive. Genny has published and spoken extensively on the experiences and needs of trans college students, including writing some of the first articles on the topic. Among the more than dozen books and journal issues that they have written/edited are The Lives of Transgender People (with Sue Rankin, 2011); A Queer Capital: A History of Gay Life in Washington, D.C. (2014); and the anthology Trans People in Higher Education (2019). With Abbie Goldberg, they edited The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies (2021) and are an associate editor of the forthcoming 2nd edition of The SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies. They are currently writing Campus Queer: Addressing the Needs of LGBTQ+ College Students with Mickey Eliason for Johns Hopkins University Press. Genny Beemyn is also the associate editor of the Journal of LGBT Youth and an editorial board member of the Journal of Bisexuality and the Journal of Homosexuality. They have a Ph.D. in African American Studies and master’s degrees in African American Studies, American Studies, and Higher Education Administration.

In their not so spare time, Genny hikes and trail runs, maintains a huge garden, rants about the political and environmental climate, road trips to Dar Williams concerts across New England, follows women's basketball, and obsesses about old Star Trek.

 

Hillary Montague-Asp, Graduate Assistant (she/her): hmontagu@umass.edu

Hillary Montague-Asp (she/her) is a white, queer, fat, cisgender femme with a chronic illness that is sometimes disabling and with access to wealth. She is the Graduate Assistant at the UMass Stonewall Center, where she supports student-led programs and events, facilitates support groups, oversees the Gender & Sexuality training programs, and provides support and advocacy to individual queer and trans students. 

Hillary is a social justice educator and DEI practitioner focusing on self-reflection and implicit bias, LGBTQ+ justice, fat justice, racial justice, and disability justice. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Social Justice Education at UMass Amherst, where she has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses on social justice in the U.S. education system, ableism & disability justice, and intergroup dialogue. She is a member of the White Co-Conspirator Network at the UMass Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research. Hillary’s dissertation research focuses on the possibilities that emerge when applying socially just perspectives to student affairs work. More specifically, she is interested in how student affairs graduate programs use or don’t use radical approaches, social justice-based skills, and critical theory to educate soon-to-be student affairs practitioners.

Hillary has earned her B.A. in Women and Gender Studies and Sociology from the University of Colorado and her M.Ed. from UMass Amherst. Hillary is the co-author of Montague-Asp, H., Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L., Shlasko, D. & Siegel, L. L. (2022). Ableism and Disability Justice. In M. Adams, L. A. Bell, D. J. Goodman & D. Shlasko (Eds.), Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice (4th ed.) (pp. 303-344). Routledge.

In her free time, Hillary loves talking and learning about all things social justice, being outdoors (particularly in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado), spending time with her partner and 5 cats, watching women’s college basketball (Go UConn!), and making music with friends.

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