Collaborative Fat 'Becomings': An Interview with Ramanpreet Annie Bahra and Kelsey Ioannoni

You two are founders and co-journal managers of Excessive Bodies: A Journal of Artistic and Critical Fat Praxis and Worldmaking, which I also help edit and do social media for. Can you shed some light on the genesis of the Excessive Bodies and how you envision it “thickening" the world of fat studies publishing?

Kelsey Ioannoni: Excessive Bodies actually started with a group who, for the most part, are no longer actively working on the journal. A few senior scholars in the field of fat studies put out a call in our networks to see if we could collectively envision a new space for both academic and creative content in fat studies. It took some time networking, building a collective, and measuring capacity, but ultimately we developed a core group of fat studies scholars who have become our editorial collective. 

One of the really cool ways we are thickening fat studies publishing is through mentorship; one of our major goals with a new space for fat studies scholarship is to help break down the barriers to publishing that many new and early career scholars face when trying to get their work out there. Our collective actively works with our authors and contributors to strengthen their work and to support them throughout the process. 

Ramanpreet Annie Bahra: It was May 2022, and in my inbox, I saw an email forwarded by Kelsey about a network that aimed to advance the field of fat studies through some medium. In a time when many of us felt isolated due to the ongoing pandemic and neoliberal standards within academia, we connected to cultivate a nurturing pedagogical practice and space for alternative expressions. Following our initial meeting, we continually reflected on how we can centre the tenets of intersectionality, knowledge mobilization, and solidarity in our organizing practices.

I remember writing in the meeting minutes that we envisioned EB as a journal “made by us, for us”—sparking our subversion of publishing pedagogies. Additionally, these ongoing conversations sought to build something accessible for those interested in fat politics and liberation. This led to structuring the journal as open access to remove barriers typically present in publishing and accessing literature, marking our second act of collective access in the world of fat scholarship. From 2022 to the present, many initial participants have had to recuse themselves to prioritize their capacities, but they continue to contribute to Excessive Bodies through various roles (copyeditors, senior advisory board members, peer reviewers, etc.). Despite changes, our editorial collective of eight members (including both of us) has witnessed joyful growth within the EB network in such a short time.

I believe this aligns with the vision May Friedman, Carla Rice, and Jen Rinaldi called for in Thickening Fat: Fat Bodies, Intersectionality, and Social Justice (2019). As a collective, we have thickened fat studies through our relationality and entanglements with individuals across intersections, institutions, and even transnationally, joining this living project. At the core of our practice, as Kelsey shares, is mentorship, which has been fruitful for our fat kinship practices. Between Kelsey and me, a love politics and non-hierarchical approach has been foundational to our collaborative work. As we co-manage the journal, we have become mentors not only to each other but also to our authors. One aspect I am proud of is the care and tenderness we have invested in the publishing process for our editorial team and authors. In a world where care is often distant from our realities of fat oppression, our gesture ensures everyone involved in the journal feels supported and part of our ‘excessive’ family.

Although you both have very unique research areas, a commonality that you share is making use of personal experience to ground your healthcare-related critiques and analyses, not only within traditional scholarship but also in outreach to the medical community about stigma and bias. Can you tell me a bit about your efforts (both collaboratively and individually) to use fat studies knowledge and feminist framings to intervene in often oppressive healthcare contexts?

Kelsey: On an individual level, I completed my doctoral dissertation at York University looking at the ways fatness acts as a barrier to accessing health care services for Canadian women. With the data from that, I have presented at many conferences, but the coolest thing I think I’m doing with my work is that I contribute to a set of “Praxis Pathway” courses in the B.HSc. program at McMaster University. These are courses that aim to provide students potential for action grounded in a strong sense of self and purpose, one’s relationship to others and the world, and the capacities for critical analysis, reflexivity, and ethical conduct. Here, I created a module for the "Critical Analysis & Reflexive" thread, where students engage in conversations and self-interrogation about power, privilege, equity, inclusion. This module explored how fatphobic experiences in health care settings and anti-fat biases held by health care professionals negatively impact the doctor-patient relationship. I had over 200 undergraduate students between the two courses attend the module over the last few semesters and engage with reflection on anti-fat bias in healthcare. This module, which I will continue to provide for the “Praxis Pathway” course, has been such a rewarding experience that provided the opportunity to get my research in front of the audience I created it for: future health care professionals.

Additionally, Raman and I collaborate on a lot of presentations and workshops! Together, we work on Excessive Bodies, but also present about anti-fat bias in healthcare settings to many different audiences, including healthcare professionals and healthcare social workers. We are currently preparing a workshop for the new year for medical school doctor candidates at the University of Toronto on anti-fat bias in healthcare. 

Raman: I would like to mention that my connection with Kelsey precedes our time as co-managers of EB. Let me share a quick story: in an effort to build community between the incoming cohort and the upper year students in the Sociology program at York, we were paired up with buddies. I was fortunate enough to meet my wonderful buddy, Kelsey, at our department welcome lunch. From there, Kelsey and I transformed our friendship into a collaborative relationship, starting with Fat Studies in Canada: (Re)Mapping the Field (2023), Excessive Bodies, and various presentations/workshops. Our objective for the workshops has been to advance critical fat praxis within the communities we are involved with. For instance, in association with the Knowledge Hub at Western University’s Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women and Children (London, Ontario) and Fraser Health Authority (British Columbia), we have presented “Fat Studies 101” workshops to audiences of over 100 people at both events. As members of the Canadian Sociological Association, we set up and chaired fat studies-centred panels at Congress 2024 and are continuing this tradition next year through our newly established Fat Studies Research Cluster with the Canadian Sociological Association. All in all, we continue to collaborate on multiple projects with the primary goal of knowledge mobilization.

In my individual projects, fat studies and critical disability studies have become my home and calling. As a first-generation fat brown femme, both spaces have provided a point of entry for understanding my lived experiences. Additionally, they offered a sense of community as I navigated the academic pipeline—an institution that has been foreign to my bloodline. My academic journey as a fat scholar has been driven by the desire to fill gaps in the literature, particularly in theorizing the fat brown experience, which is deeply intertwined with colonial discourses of the body.