Onyx Sloan Morgan

Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social SciencesDepartment of Community, Culture and Global Studies

Onyx Sloan Morgan

(They, Them, Theirs)

Assistant Professor

Geography

Office: LM4 624
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 358: Gender, Place & Culture (Fall 2021); GEOG 217: Regional Geographies of BC (Winter 2022); GEOG 491: Human Ecology (Winter 2022)

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 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 Political Ecologies is an emergent and burgeoning area of my research. Alongside Dr. Paul Sylvestre (Carleton University), 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’. Our emerging research explores how fire has been weaponized as a tool for colonial dispossession outside of wildfires, and its disparate and uneven impacts across communities. I’m excited to expand the framework of queering 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 or have questions pertaining to graduate supervison.