Onyx Sloan Morgan

(They, Them, Theirs)

Assistant Professor

Community, Culture and Global Studies
Other Titles: Principal's Research Chair in Communities, Justice, Tier II Principal’s Research Chair in Communities, Justice, and Sustainability and Sustainability
Office: ART 252
Office Hours: Please email for the term’s office hours
Email: onyx.sloanmorgan@ubc.ca


Research Summary

Critical human geography; resource extraction; sexuality and gender; queering political ecology; settler colonialism; youth-led research and social movements; modern treaties

Courses & Teaching

GEOG 460: Critical Geographies of the Anthropocene (2023, Term 1); GEOG 358: Gender, Place and Culture (2023, Term 1); IGS 550: Voice, Justice, Change (2023, Term 2)

Biography

My research is most often conducted in partnership with and at the direction of communities. My positionality as a queer, non-binary white settler of Irish and Scottish ancestries steers my engagement. Having grown up on unceded Lekwungen territories, my research seeks to: 1) reveal the power dynamics at the core of inequitable and oppressive structures, and 2) foreground the resistive, transformative relationalities that communities enliven every day for more just and sustainable futures.

Degrees

PhD, Queen’s University
MES, Dalhousie University
BA, University of Victoria

Research Interests & Projects

My research focuses on three overlapping interests: 1) socio-legal and colonial geographies; 2) queering and critical political ecologies; and 3) healthy environments and communities in rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous locales. Longstanding research partnerships animate my current research.

Socio-Legal and Colonial Geographies structure the very core of unceded territories across so-called British Columbia. Since 2010, I have worked collaboratively with Huu-ay-aht First Nations and my long-time colleague Dr. Heather Castleden (University of Victoria) to explore these geographies. Our SSHRC-funded research focuses on the negotiation and now implementation of the Maa-nulth Treaty, including the complex relationships outlined through these agreements, the living nature of legal orders, and self-governance within and despite colonial structures.

My research on healthy environments and communities in rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous locales has, since 2017, taken place with communities across so-called northern BC. Our work began by exploring youth perceptions of healthy and just environments and communities, particularly in light of extractive activities. This research has led to a partnership with Binche Whut’en First Nation as the Nation works to enliven traditional governance in light of intergenerational impacts of extraction and the legacy of environmental contaminants.

Queering and Critical Political Ecologies is an emergent and burgeoning area of my research. I am excited to begin the UBC-funded project ‘Recasting the Geographies of Fire: How Fire Shapes Politics of Gendered, Racial, and Colonial Relations in Settler Colonial British Columbia’. This emerging research re-frames fire through a settler colonial lens to explore how fire has been weaponized as a tool for colonial dispossession with uniquely gendered and radicalized effects. I’m excited to expand the framework of queering and critical political ecologies to ask questions and explore topics that continue to impact communities across so-called BC and beyond.

Please feel free to be in touch if you are interested in these topics.

Professional Services/Affiliations/Committees

Member of the ACME Collective and Editor-in-Chief ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies.

Power, Conflict, and Ideas & Community Engagement, Social Change, Equity Theme Member, School of Graduate Studies, UBC Okanagan

Executive Member, UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice

Advisory Committee Member, Health Arts Research Centre, University of Northern British Columbia

Research Member, Institute for Community Engaged Research, UBC Okanagan

 

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