Faculty Bio

Ashley Noelle Biser

The Charles W. Fairbanks Associate Professor of Politics & Government

Education

• B.A., Mount Holyoke College
• Ph.D., University of Minnesota

About

Ashley Biser teaches a wide range of political theory courses, including Democracy and Its Critics, Classical Issues in Political Theory, American Political Thought and Political Theory, Science and Technology. She also regularly teaches PG110, the introductory politics and government course, and she has led a Travel-Learning Course to Athens, Greece, to study theories of citizenship.

A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Biser received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, where she double majored in Politics and German Studies. She served as a Fellow in Genetics and the Law at the Council for Responsible Genetics in 2003 and was a pre-doctoral visiting scholar at Northwestern University from 2007–2008.

Beyond the academic setting, Professor Biser is the co-founder and Board member of Akili Dada, an international nonprofit organization that funds educational opportunities for young women in Kenya. In her free time, she enjoys rowing on the Scioto River.

Areas of Interest / Expertise

Biser’s research interests are in contemporary political theory, focusing on the works of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger.

She wrote her dissertation on the political implications of new reproductive and genetic technologies.

Publications / Presentations

“‘The Unnatural Growth of the National’: reconsidering nature and artifice in the context of biotechnology,” Second Nature: Rethinking the Natural Through Politics, ed. Crina Archer, Laura Ephraim, Lida Maxwell (Fordham University Press, 2013).

Winner of the 2014 Sherwood Dodge Shankland Award for Encouragement of Teachers