Shilpa Das heads Interdisciplinary Design Studies at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. A graduate of Jawaharlal Nehru University and Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India, Shilpa brings 33 years of expertise spanning education, publishing, and the voluntary sectors.
Through her work, Shilpa continues to shape and advance inclusive and interdisciplinary design worldwide. She has been involved in outreach and consultancy projects, notably, a project on strategic behaviour change with respect to persons with disabilities for Handicap International and Department of Health and Family Welfare for the Government of Gujarat. She has published more than 50 research papers with reputed publishers like Springer and Routledge. Her latest book as Co-Editor, Narrative Universes of Disability was published by Springer in May, 2025. She was co-editor of a special issue on Human Centred Design in Global Health for the journal, Global Health: Science and Practice, UK.
Shilpa has collaborated internationally, teaching Disability Studies, Inclusive Design for Disability, and conducting disability sensitization workshops in institutions including Konstfack, Sweden; School of Art and Design, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Lucerne, Switzerland; Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy; Marist College, New York; HTW Berlin, Germany; Royal College of Art, London, UK; Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, Barcelona, Spain; MOME, Budapest, Hungary; Estonian Academy of the Arts, Tallinn, Estonia; F+F School, Switzerland;. Delhi University, Kolkata university, University of Kashmir, Central University, Gandhinagar; Central University, Ajmer; Gujarat University; Gauhati University, School of Architecture, School of Planning and School of Interior Design, CEPT, Ahmedabad among others.
She is Vice-Chairperson of the Indian Disability Studies Collective since 2021; and, on the Board of The Centre for Disability Research and Training, Delhi University, New Delhi since 2020. She is currently a Board member of the Social Design Network, a global consortium for social design. She has been granted Super Advisory status on McKinsey's Design for Good initiative, a non-profit global alliance that aims to directly deliver measurable impact on society’s biggest challenges related to the UN SDGs (2022-present). Shilpa has been Member, Advisory Group, Missing Billion Initiative & Philips Inclusive Health Facility Co-Design Project for People with Disabilities, London (2022). She was on the Board of Advisors to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2018 on using human-centered design (HCD) in global health.
She has been awarded international research grants in projects and collaborated with faculty teams from Konstfack University, Sweden; Swinburne University of Technology in Australia (awarded by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research); University of the Arts, London (awarded by the British Council), London, and Lucerne School of Art and Design, Switzerland (awarded twice by The Swiss Leading House South Asia and Iran), and the Tokyo University of the Arts (Government of Japan) among others.
Her PhD from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, was a study of social stigma with respect to women with disabilities in Gujarat. She has several publications in the area to her credit.