Dr. Max Liboiron on Building Feminist and Anticolonial Technologies in Compromised Spaces

(Virtual/ Online Event with Professional Live Captions in English)
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Dr. Max Liboiron will present on building feminist and anticolonial technologies in compromised spaces.

How do we build the tools, practices, and infrastructures we need for a more just world when our spaces are already defined by colonial land relations, sexism, ableism, and racism? In this talk, Dr. Liboiron discusses the concept of “compromise” not as a failure, but a condition of doing ethical work within uneven power relations, touching on examples such as inventing scientific tools, citation practices, and policy creation.

Dr. Liboiron is an Associate Professor in Geography and is formerly the Associate Vice-President (Indigenous Research) at Memorial University. Liboiron is Métis/Michif (Woodman via Red River) who grew up in Lac la Biche, Treaty 6 territory. Dr. Max Liboiron is leader in both developing and promoting anticolonial research methods into a wide array of disciplines and spaces. As founder of CLEAR, an interdisciplinary plastic pollution laboratory whose methods foreground humility and good land relations, Liboiron has influenced national policy on both plastics and Indigenous research, invented technologies and protocols for community monitoring of plastics, and led the development of the interdisciplinary field of discard studies.

Liboiron’s book, Pollution is Colonialism, bridges Science and Technology Studies (STS), Indigenous studies, and discard studies while providing a framework for understanding all research methods as practices that align with or against colonialism. Focusing on plastic pollution, the text models an anticolonial scientific practice associated with Métis concepts of land, ethics, and relations, and demonstrates that anticolonial science is not only possible, but it is currently being practiced.

This event is part of the 4th Season of the Feminist and Accessible Publishing and Communications Technologies Speaker and Workshop Series, organized by Dr. Alex Ketchum. This event is co-sponsored by Dr. Damon Matthews as part of the Leadership in Environmental and Digital Innovation for Sustainability.

Our series was made possible thanks to our sponsors: SSHRC, the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF), the DIGS Lab, Milieux, Initiative for Indigenous Futures, MILA, and more (see our website!)

There is no fee required to attend this event. We will provide captions in English. This event will be recorded and made available on our website after the event.