When Francesca Espey was growing up, she paid close attention to how her father’s Parkinson’s disease shaped the way people treated him. Some avoided interacting with him altogether. Others would infantalize him, assuming limitations that were not there. Over time, Espey began to notice how quickly a diagnosis could eclipse a person’s complexity. The experience stayed with her, teaching her that disability is not only about physical challenges, but about how society chooses to respond to them.
For Espey, now an undergraduate in international studies and law, societies & justice, that awareness has become a guiding force. It has shaped her academic path and her commitment to disability rights, including her work as a recipient of this year’s Mary Gates Research Scholarship. Through the scholarship, Espey is conducting research within international human rights law, work she hopes will help “[create] a world that is more inclusive of persons with disabilities and prioritizes their dignity, humanity, and best interests,” she said.
That commitment first took form during the summer after her freshman year, when Espey participated in a Jackson School study abroad program in Peru. There, she worked with women with disabilities through the international human rights organization Paz y Esperanza. The project required her to compile a report weaving together personal interviews with international legal frameworks, including the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). While the experience was formative, Espey left feeling unfulfilled. She believed her contribution lacked depth and that much of the broader human rights context remained unexplored.
That sense of unfinished work pushed her to seek out more rigorous research opportunities. In spring 2025, Espey joined Associate Professor Stephen Meyers’ Task Force in Rome, where she examined disability accessibility in public spaces. The project combined a literature review with on-the-ground case studies of parks, piazzas, playgrounds, and a recreation center across the city. Espey expanded her research by reaching out to disability rights advocates and scholars in Italy, drawing on her fluency in Italian to deepen those conversations. Espey will present this work at the 2026 Zero Project Conference at the United Nations Headquarters in Vienna this February.
Her Mary Gates–funded research builds directly on this foundation while introducing her to a new but closely related area of inquiry: disability-based violence. Drawing on discussions from the most recent Conference of States Parties to the CRPD, Espey noted that even though disability-based violence “is believed to be widespread, it is not well-understood nor is there evidence of a common approach to its prevention or punishment.” Speakers at the conference, she said, “highlighted the need for research to develop a conceptual framework of DBV and support advocacy for law reforms at all levels of international and national governance.”
For Espey, the Mary Gates Research Scholarship will allow her to fully engage in that work. The award will support travel to the Zero Project Conference, as well as the Law and Society Conference in San Francisco, where she will present her findings and connect with scholars and advocates working at the intersection of disability rights and international law. These opportunities, she said, are central to translating research into broader conversations — and, ultimately, into change.
“Since my time at UW, I have dedicated much of my studies to disability rights work and have consequently developed a strong passion for this area of research,” Espey said.
