Elizabeth Jameson is an artist and writer who explores what it means to live in an imperfect body as part of the universal human experience.  Before her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, she served as a public interest lawyer representing incarcerated children; she later represented children living with chronic illnesses and disabilities in their attempts to receive medically necessary care.

As her disease progressed, she began using her MRI’s to create art as a way of reclaiming agency of her own medical data. She transformed the unsettling, clinical images into work that invites people to open up conversations about what it means to have an illness or disability. Her work is part of permanent collections both nationally and internationally, including the National Institutes of Health, major universities, and medical schools.

She now writes personal essays and speaks across the country sharing her experiences living with illness and disability. Her essays have been published by The New York Times, British Medical Journal, WIRED magazine, and MIT’s Leonardo Journal. Her essay, “Losing Touch, Finding Intimacy,” was included in the New York Times book, About Us, released in September 2019 by Norton Publishing.

Many of her lectures at medical schools and symposiums have been recorded and shared, including her TedX talk, “Learning to Celebrate and Embrace Our Imperfect Bodies.”

Click the links below to view her recent talks:

Story of Impact - Stanford Medicine X 2017

Learning To Embrace and Celebrate Our Imperfect Bodies - Stanford TEDx 2017

Acknowledgements

Due to the ever-changing and progressive nature of life with MS, Jameson has worked with several studio assistants over the years including writing with Catherine Monahon. Currently she collaborates with writer, editor, and media creator Lisa Foote, and journalist, Lucia Graves.