Ásta (born October 5, 1969) is a featured  Icelandic philosopher. She is a professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University. Ásta has a BA in mathematics and philosophy from Brandeis University in 1992, AM in philosophy from Harvard University in 1997, and a PhD in philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004. She was a host lecturer at Vassar College in New York in late 2004 and early 2005 and has taught at San Francisco State University since 2005. She has written on questions related to essence and modality, response-dependence, realism and anti-realism, naturalism, sex, gender, race, disability, other social categories, and social construction.

Honours and Awards  

• Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams, Jr. Fellowship, National Humanities Center, 2016-2017
• Sabbatical Award, San Francisco State University, Fall 2012 [semester leave]
• Presidential Award, San Francisco State University, Spring 2010 [semester leave]
• Faculty Diversity Award, San Francisco State University, Fall 2008 [one-course release]
• Vice President’s AT Award, San Francisco State University, Spring 2006 [one-course release]
• Phi Beta Kappa, 1992
• Class of 1955 Endowment Fund Prize, Brandeis University, 1992
• Brandeis University Scholar, 1991-1992
• Undergraduate Fellow, Brandeis University, 1991-1992
• Wien International Scholar, Brandeis University, 1989-1992
• Represented Iceland at the International Physics Olympiads, Austria 1988 and Poland 1989
• Represented Iceland at the International Mathematics Olympiad in Australia in 1988

Books

• Categories we live by The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race, and Other Social Categories, Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Oxford Handbook of Feminist Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2021.

Articles

• Ásta. “Can Conferralism Account for Systemic Racism?”. Forthcoming in The Southern Journal of Philosophy.
• Ásta. “Categories We Live By: Reply to Alcoff, Butler, and Roth“, European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12744.
• Kim Q. Hall and Ásta. “What Is Feminist Philosophy?” In Oxford Handbook of Feminist Philosophy, ed. by Kim Q. Hall and Ásta, Oxford UP, 2021.
• Ásta. “Ideological Absorption and Countertechniques: Comments on Lindemann“, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy: Vol. 17 No. 3 (2020): Volume XVII, Issue 3.
• Ásta. “Response to Critics“, Journal of Social Ontology2020: 5, 2: 273-283.
• Ásta. “Précis: Categories We Live By“, Journal of Social Ontology 20205, 2: 229-233
• Ásta. “Categorical Injustice“. The Journal of Social Philosophy50th Anniversary Special Issue, 50: 392-406. Winter 2019.
• Ásta. “To Do Metaphysics as a Feminist: Reflections on Feminist Methodology in Light of the Hypatia Affair“. APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, Fall 2017, ed. by Serena Parekh. The penultimate version is here.
• Ásta. “Social Kinds“. The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intentionality, ed. by Kirk Ludwig and Marija Jankovic, Routledge, 2017.
• Sally Haslanger and Ásta. “Feminist Metaphysics” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017.
  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-metaphysics/.
• Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir. “The Naturalism Question in Feminism“, The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism, ed. by Kelly James Clark, Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. The penultimate version is here.
• Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir. “Social Construction“, Philosophy Compass, December 2015.
• Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir. “Who’s Afraid of Feminist Metaphysics?” in APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, Fall 2013.
• Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir. “Knowledge of Essence“, Philosophical Studies, October 2013. Springer location.
• Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir. “The Social Construction of Human Kinds“, Hypatia, Fall 2013. Wiley location.
• Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir. “The Metaphysics of Sex and Gender“, Feminist Metaphysics, ed. by Charlotte Witt, 2011.
• Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir. “Siding with Euthyphro“, European Journal of Philosophy, March 2010.
• Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir. „Fólkstegundir“. Hugur, 2009 [“Human Kinds”. In Hugur, Reykjavík, 2009].
• Ásta Sveinsdóttir. “Essentiality Conferred“, Philosophical Studies, July 2008. Springer location.