Dr. Mercedes Adell Cannon is the director of Accessible Educational Services (AES) in the Division of Student Affairs at Indiana University Indianapolis, where she has also served as an adjunct faculty member in the School of Education. She earned her Ph.D. in Urban Education Studies in 2019.

A scholar-practitioner bridging special and inclusive education, Disability Studies in Education, and disability services leadership, Dr. Cannon draws on her own positionality as a Black woman with a Speech and Language Impairment in her critical autoethnographic research on the identity-intersection experiences of students with disabilities in higher education. Her dissertation, "Because I am Human: Centering Black Women with Disabilities in Transition Planning from High School to College," received the American Educational Research Association's Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Disability Studies in Education Special Interest Group.

Dr. Cannon's work — as director and as a scholar — is guided by a simple belief: because we are human, we all deserve dignity, hope, and the opportunity to flourish. She has 23 publications on record, including:

  • Coomer, M. N., Cannon, M. A., Taijeron, V., & Prity, T. (2025). Critical care as anti-racist disability activism: Subverted truths around mental health and wellness of Black and Brown students on a college campus. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 38(2), 459–473.
  • Cannon, M. A., & Thorius, K. K. (2025). Fighting anti-Black ableism with a dis/abled Black woman's critique of social systems. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 3(7), 1–12.
  • Cannon, M., & Hernández-Saca, D. I. (2024). Bridging a decade of autoethnographic identity coalition: A dis/ability intersectional dialectic hermeneutic reflection framework. Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 29(2), 1–22.
  • Cannon, M. A., & Hernández-Saca, D. I. (2024). "Storying" from special education classroom: Centering voices from accessible-interdependence-intimacy as interdisciplinary justice in pedagogical practices. Theory Into Practice, 63(4), 390–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2024.2355840
  • Cannon, M. A., & Morton, C. H. (2015). God-consciousness enacted living, moving, and having my being in Him. Western Journal of Black Studies, 39(4), 147–156.
  • Hernández-Saca, D. I., & Cannon, M. A. (2019). Interrogating disability epistemologies: Towards collective dis/ability intersectional emotional, affective and spiritual autoethnographies for healing. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 32(3), 243–262. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2019.1576944
  • Hernández-Saca, D. I., Gutmann Kahn, L., & Cannon, M. A. (2018). Intersectionality dis/ability research: How dis/ability research in education engages intersectionality to uncover the multidimensional construction of dis/abled experiences. Review of Research in Education, 42(1), 286–311.

Dr. Cannon’s ORCID Number: 0000-0002-9956-2112

She currently serves as Associate Editor for the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE) and as an Editorial Review Board Member for the Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability (JPED) for the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD).