How Ashley Jane Lewis is exploring radical Black futures through science, technology and storytelling
Ashley Jane Lewis is one of the inaugural recipients of TMU’s Postdoctoral Fellowship for Black Scholars. She is a new media artist and creative technologist whose work focuses on interactive installations, bio art, social justice and speculative design.
Her artistic practice explores Black cultures of the past, present and future through computational and analog mediums including coding and machine learning, digital and physical fabrication, data weaving, microorganisms and live performance. Using science, Lewis draws inspiration from living organisms like slime mold, mycelium and other organic cultures to explore pathways to a more equitable future.
Lewis holds a BFA in new media from TMU, as well as a master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
Most recently, Lewis was the manager of TMU’s Design Fabrication Zone. She was seeking an opportunity to extend her research and pedagogy when the Postdoctoral Fellowship for Black Scholars was announced.
With no PhD in her field, Lewis knew she’d have to create a compelling application to stand out over other applicants with traditional PhDs – but she was up for the challenge.
“I deeply believe that artists and creative technologists should have the opportunity to do postdocs,” said Lewis. “I think that we are in an era where art has been a pivotal voice in changing minds, in creating conversations that need to be had. I deeply believe that these opportunities should be available to artists.”
Using slime mold to foster conversations about equity
Slime mold is a multicellular and single cellular yellow biological culture – most often found on decaying forest litter and rotting wood. “Slime mold is a network of cells that’s very interesting to laboratories and technology because it's an extremely efficient organism,” said Lewis. “It has the capacity to seek food and make decisions at an efficiency rate that's higher than most other organisms on the planet.”
Throughout the fellowship, Lewis is looking to further build technology devices that examine and document the behavioral patterns of slime mold as a mechanism to foster conversations about the Black community.
“My objective is to look at the wisdom and potential that can come from this non-human organism.”
“I'm also really interested in the way that these cells exhibit communities of care,” said Lewis. “One thing that is often left out of the conversation when studying slime mold and how efficiently it can get to food sources, is the fact that the cell that reached the food source first does not actually consume the nutrients, but rather the nutrients are passed down the web, to the cells that need it most, the ones that are struggling or sickly. I think that's a really beautiful articulation of the potential of slime mold to show us different ways of being together, different ways of sharing information and sharing resources.”
Lewis is being supervised by David Gauntlett, a professor and Canada Research Chair in Creativity at The Creative School.
“I am so proud and delighted that Ashley persuaded the panel, in a very tough competition, to award her this opportunity to develop her incredible work,” said Gauntlett. “Ashley is an incredibly innovative scholar, drawing on a wide palette of artistic, technological, scientific, and philosophical domains to rethink social questions. She is widely seen as a rising star, and one of TMU’s most exciting researchers. I am sure she will make a huge impact with this project.”
In 2022, Lewis was featured in a Google series for their Black Women Techmakers campaign. With well over a million views, this Webby Award-winning series aims to show the diversity of creative, socially driven practices in technology.
More about Ashley Jane Lewis
Listed among the top 100 Black Women to Watch in Canada, Lewis’ award-winning work on empowered futures for marginalized groups has been exhibited in both Canada and the U.S., most notably featured on the White House website during the Obama presidency.
Her advocacy work as an educator and activist has enabled her to push tech institutions to explore new equitable policies that better consider the safety of women, Black people and Queer identities. As an educator, Lewis has taught more than 3,500 young people how to code, earning her press coverage as a tech activist from Reader’s Digest, Huffington Post, Metro News and Washington Square News. Lewis has taught at CultureHub NYC, Genspace, InterAccess, Toronto Metropolitan University, OCAD University, Parsons and the School for Poetic Computation.
About the Postdoctoral Fellowship for Black Scholars
Black scholars are among the most underrepresented in post-doctoral and tenured faculty positions and university leadership. To address this and respond to recommendations of the (PDF file) Anti-Black Racism Campus Climate Review Report, TMU launched the Post-Doctoral Fellowships for Black Scholars program in December 2022.
The fellowship was developed by the Faculty Working Group in collaboration with the Yeates School of Graduate Studies, and funded through the Presidential Implementation Committee to Confront Anti-Black Racism (PICCABR) and the Office of the Provost. The program seeks to expand and advance Black scholars and the Afro-centric intellectual traditions, support their academic endeavours, contribute to broader, meaningful inclusion of Black scholars, expand opportunities for research capacity in the institution and the wider community, and support career development and career readiness for Black scholars.
Stay tuned
Over fifty applications were received from across Canada, with four fellowships awarded. Joseph Adu, Teshager Kefale and Esa Kerme are the other recipients of this fellowship. Read Joseph’s profile in the fall 2023 newsletter and stay tuned to future issues of the OVPFA newsletter to learn more about Teshager’s and Esa’s research!
In October 2023, the inaugural cohort of fellows was welcomed at a ceremony hosted by the Black Scholarship Institute and the Faculty of Community Services.
Confronting anti-Black racism at TMU
This initiative is just one of many outcomes in response to the 14 recommendations of the
(PDF file) Anti-Black Racism Campus Climate Review Report, published by the Office of the Vice-President, Equity and Community Inclusion (OVPECI) in 2020.
The Presidential Implementation Committee to Confront Anti-Black Racism is a group of close to 50 dedicated individuals from across the university who have created action plans to implement those recommendations and cultivate Black flourishing on campus, and beyond. Learn about the report, the progress of recommendations and more on the university’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism website.