In addition to her dissertation research in Art History, Or Vallah is a fellow in the Disability Studies Program at UW. Or studies the Italian Renaissance as a period of self-definition for artists as professionals and shows the development of various behavioral and emotional models shaped by social and bodily experiences in sixteenth-century Central Italy. In her dissertation, she conducts a pioneering examination of the construction of artists’ identity as mentally and physically hyper-abled and its effect on the narration of art history.