Ashley Shew is a professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech. Her current research sits at the intersection of technology studies, biotech ethics, and disability studies. She was recipient of an NSF CAREER Award for work on disability narrative about technology (#1750260, Disability, Experience, and Technological Imagination, 2018-2023), and is currently a principal investigator of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Higher Learning project that supports the creation of a regional Disability Community Technology Center (DisCoTec) providing guidance for developing disabled-led technology and disability-forward technological futures through humanities-based scholarship and disability justice education, arts, and outreach (Just Dis Tech Project, 2023-2026).
Shew’s book Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (2023) and forthcoming open textbook, co-edited with Hanna Herdegen, Technology and Disability, both focus on the stories disabled people tell about technologies that people do not always expect.
Ashley’s past work has been in philosophy of technology with particular interest in technological knowledge, animal studies, and emerging technologies. She is a recent former co-editor-in-chief of Techné, the journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (2020-2024). She is sole author of Technological Knowledge and Animal Constructions (2017) and co-editor of three philosophy of technology volumes: Spaces for the Future (with Joe Pitt, 2017), Feedback Loops (with Andrew Garnar, 2020), and Reimagining Philosophy and Technology, Reinventing Ihde (with Glen Miller, 2020). Shew is currently vice president/president-elect for the international Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT), and will start her term as president in June 2027.
Shew believes in cross-disciplinary, cross-disability, and public-facing scholarship: she has written for IEEE Technology & Society, Nursing Clio, Nature, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed. She is a grateful participant with her local disability advocacy and activist community in the Disability Alliance and Caucus at Virginia Tech and the New River Valley Disability Resource Center.
At Virginia Tech, Shew participates as a faculty member in the Science and Technology Studies PhD program, Medicine & Society minor, and Disability Studies minor; she’s also the current director of the Bioethics graduate certificate, and a longtime executive committee member with the Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program on Regenerative Medicine. She’s affiliated in Philosophy and the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought (ASPECT).
Technology and Disability 