Born in Port Elgin, Ontario, Jeff Preston was diagnosed with Congenital Muscular Dystrophy at the age of 3 months, which requires him to use an electric wheelchair. Throughout his life Jeff has advocated for the needs of himself and others with disabilities hoping to live an independent and barrier-free life. Jeff has completed a Masters in Media Studies program, also at UWO, where he wrote about disability and the body in his Master’s thesis entitled “Augmented Ability, Integrated Identity: Understanding Sapienism, Adaptive Technology, and the Construction of Disability.” In 2014, Jeff completed a Doctorate in Media Studies, successfully defending his dissertation “Fantasizing Disability: Representation of Loss and Limitation in Popular Television and Film.”
Jeff’s first book, The Fantasy of Disability was published by Routledge in 2016.