My name is Stephanie Mantilla. I’m a PhD student and casual tutor at the University of Sydney with the Faculty of Medicine and Health. My PhD research looks at invisible disability in health campaigns on Instagram. I’m a RTP scholarship recipient and also a student with the Centre of Research Excellence in Disability and Health. My PhD research also won the 2021 ANZCA Christopher Newell Prize.

I have a BA (Media and Communications) with First Class Honours from the University of Sydney. My thesis looked at the representation of people with invisible disability in the Australian soapie Home and Away. I’m also fluent in Spanish and have extensive experience with the Adobe Creative Suite. Thanks to my media background, I love digital content creation, especially photography and video creation (and I probably own a few too many cameras). I try to find opportunities to mix my love for digital content creation with my passion for research about invisible disability via creative projects, such as the ‘Why you should believe my pain‘ project. The project explored the way people with invisible disability’s pain is sometimes ignored by others and was funded by the Harris Student Fellowship 2017/18.

The Visibility Movement is a blog where I share updates on my research, which looks at invisible disability. I hope to help raise awareness about and give visibility to invisible disabilities and encourage a more inclusive re-imagining of what it means to be disabled.

If you’d like to get in touch please feel free to drop me line at: stephanie.mantilla@sydney.edu.au