Ashley Cowan D'Ambrosio is a Mad/Mentally Ill, Chronically Ill, Disabled activist, educator and entrepreneur. She is a graduate of the UW Disability Studies program (class of 2019) and a current student at the City University of New York (CUNY) pursuing a Masters of Arts in Disability Studies.
She is the founder and CEO of Crip Riot, a disabled-owned and led company committed to bringing expressions of disability pride to the world, through unapologetic clothing, media, education and activism. She is also the founder of Myers Fork Consulting, providing support to businesses and organizations interested in building scalable solutions to systemic challenges with accessibility, equity and growth.
As of January 2023, Ashley serves as the COVID-19 & Higher Education Program Manager at the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), where she is building out AAPD's advocacy program to ensure access to education for people with disabilities across the nation.
Her research interests center around incorporating theories of "Crip Spacetime" into higher education instructional design (Universal/Inclusive Design), through distance learning integration, self-paced, asynchronous instruction, etc. It is her experience as a non-traditional, first-gen, chronically-ill, mad/mentally-ill high school-dropout, which has motivated a desire to explore the narratives and contexts of disabled students who have been criminalized, pathologized, and/or traumatized as part of their educational journey.
Areas of scholarly interest: Inclusive Design in Education, Madness in Education, Disability in Higher Education, student activism, chronic pain/madness (bodymind) and sexuality
Research methodologies: Mixed Methods, Surveys, Document Analysis/Archival
