My Research

Photo by Jose Santacruz

In the broadest sense, I study how narratives (of culture, technology, science, and policy) limit or open up possibilities for pursuing justice with other beings. This involves examining how narratives circulate and shape popular discussions, including resistance movements. It also involves developing public humanities projects — often in collaboration with students and community organizations — that support multispecies worlds.

Books

Illustration by Laura Alvear Roa for the Culture and Animals Foundation, September 2023.


My first book, “Entangled Lives: Multispecies Selves, Justice, and Narratives,” considers how contemporary life writing by authors such as Jamaica Kincaid, Jane Goodall, and Mark Doty has expanded the borders of the self to include nonhuman beings and it shows how these entangled selves provide a model for reimagining the liberal subject at the center of juridical systems and theories. By doing so, the book proposes modes of multispecies justice that aim to sustain reciprocal relations and produce more livable worlds for diverse beings, humans and otherwise. The first section considers how reciprocal relations with nonhumans create alternative models of selfhood; the second theorizes disruptions to reciprocal relations and entangled selves as violence; and the third asks how human and nonhuman coalitions resist threats to their coexistence. At once contributing to the environmental humanities and ecocriticism, “Entangled Lives” works at the nexus of critical animal studies, autobiography studies, and environmental and ecological justice studies.

My second book project considers displacement as a defining environmental problem of the twenty-first century, one that harms human and nonhuman communities and severely restricts possibilities for coexistence. I consider how the concept of “home” has undergone a resurgence in environmental thought and discourse, at a time when unprecedented numbers of humans and other beings are experiencing displacement from the places, ecologies, and relationships that sustain their sense of being. The project sets out to understand how neoliberal policies have produced global crises of “homelessness,” and to ask how the concept of “home” might provide a rubric for resisting displacement and producing more just and livable worlds

Podcast

Mining for the Climate is a collaborative podcast that explores the impacts of lithium mining on communities and ecosystems. Working closely with local communities, we consider how new and old forms of mining are fueling the energy transition and what the consequences are of a more mining-dependent society on humans, other beings, and the climate.

Season 1 takes listeners to a proposed lithium mine in Gaston County, North Carolina, an agricultural region hailed by green technology and mining companies as a future hub for the production of lithium batteries. We talk to local residents who oppose the 1,500-acre open-pit mine proposed by Piedmont Lithium and we delve into the issues at stake if domestic reliance on mining deepens.

Season 2 visits the McDermitt Caldera, a desert region in northern Nevada that has recently become the epicenter of US lithium mining. We talk with local experts who are concerned about impacts from Lithium Nevada’s 6,000-acre Thacker Pass Lithium Mine and several other mining projects currently underway. Look for it in May 2025.

Mining for the Climate is available on Apple PodcastsSpotifyAmazon MusiciHeartRadio, and PlayerFM.

The project is a production of Blue Lab, an environmental research and storytelling group at Princeton University directed by Allison Carruth. Webpage and cover art design by Barron Bixler. Created by Juan Manuel Rubio, Jessica Ng, and Nate Otjen with research, writing and production support from Alex Norbrook, Grace Wang, Max Widmann, Christopher Bao, and Jose Santacruz. Hosted by Juan Manuel Rubio, Max Widmann, Alex Norbrook, Grace Wang, Nate Otjen, Jessica Ng, Jose Santacruz, and Christopher Bao and mixed by Juan Manuel Rubio, Nate Otjen, Grace Wang, Christopher Bao, and Jessica Ng.

Profiles

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Publications