This commemorative session celebrates the life and work of Piet Devos (1983–2024), a Belgian writer, literary scholar, and passionate advocate for disability arts. A postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University's Centre for Sensory Studies in 2016, Piet's work bridged literature, sensory studies, and disability studies in deeply original ways. Blind since childhood, his intellectual and artistic pursuits were grounded in his embodied understanding of multisensory perception and his interest in expressing and sharing how he encountered the world through synaesthesia. His writings and research offered powerful insights into how sensory difference can reframe thinking and writing about human experience.

Drawing inspiration from historical figures like Jacques Lusseyran — a member of the French resistance and blind writer whose memoirs deeply influenced his thinking—Piet continued to develop and argue for the creative and perceptual possibilities opened by blindness and for a recognition of the richness of non-visual experience. Piet used both scholarship and art to challenge reductive understandings of disability and to promote a more inclusive cultural imagination.
In this session, friends and colleagues will gather to share memories of Piet's generous spirit and his intellectual legacy. We will read selections of his poetry — works that explore disability, perception, and embodiment in the arts and the everyday— listen to sounds he recorded, and trace his broader artistic and academic research. This tribute is an invitation to carry forward Piet's way of celebrating the richness of sensory diversity and radical inclusivity through his art and poetry.