Current research

My current research program reckons with the interlocking formations of violence that are driving current eco-political crises and scrambling to dominate possible futures. Most mainstream discussions of these issues focus on the ‘solutions’ promoted by powerful actors such as states, corporations or hyper-wealthy individuals. In contrast, my research foregrounds the survival theories, practices and knowledge of some of the world’s most marginalized more-than-human communities - those who are expected to have ‘no future’ and whose worlds are targeted for destruction. The aim of this research program is to proliferate pathways toward collective survival that challenge and transcend oppressive logics (such as colonialism, racism, ableism, anthropocentrism, capitalism, heteropatriarchy and eugenics).

Some of my current research projects include:

• a multi-disciplinary, collaborative project that aims to identify and resist emerging logics of eugenics in the context of ecological, political and technological crises and in areas such as conservation, global public health, climate policy, technoscience and crisis/disaster preparedness.

• a study of the ethics of unconditionality as a basis for eco-political relations and collective survival, which draws on insights from disability justice, abolitionist theory and environmental justice

• a collaborative team-based project on Autistic and crip ecological knowledges, including the development of new methodologies, theoretical frameworks and original place-based research/research creation (e.g. sound studies, poetry) (funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant, ‘Autistic+ Knowledge Ecologies’, 2023-2028)

• an interdisciplinary project on abolitionist theory (including carceral, institutional, border and ecological abolition) in the context of global ecological, political and technological crises

• ongoing collaborations in areas such as multi-species justice, earth-centred politics, seabeds as sites of environmental violence and geographies of sensory harm.

Previous projects

Extinction, conservation and global structures of violence

Since the early 2010s, I’ve studied how global patterns of extinction are driven by interlocking structures of violence and oppression, with a particular focus on diverse Indigenous communities’ modes of resistance and world-making against these forces. This work has also produced original critiques of mainstream conservation and its entwinement with colonialism, racism, ableism, eugenic and extractivism. I have also published influential research on oppressive narratives of 'human extinction’, the ‘end of the world’ and alternatives rooted in anti-colonial, BIPOC, crip and queer theory. You can read more about this work in my new book, Revenant Ecologies, and my other publications.

My earlier research contributions encompass an internationally-recognized body of work on subjects including:

• more-than-human, post-humanist and related approaches to the role of nonhumans in global ethics and politics (including animals, plants, ecosystems, material culture and technologies)

• multi-species justice, relationships and politics

• earth and planet-focused approaches to global politics

• Indigenous and anti-colonial outer space law and ethics

• the ethics of global plastics pollution

• critical appraoches to international intervention, genocide studies and theories of dehumanization

• anti-colonial and post-liberal approaches to peace and conflict studies