Delve into our research
The TRU’s collection of publications include materials that come out of our projects, as well as publications that are authored and coauthored by TRU members (past and present) that align with our research areas and values.
FEATURED PUBLICATIONS
The TRU’s Data Protocol
Yanchapaxi, M. F., & Wemigwans, J., Technoscience Research Unit. Data Protocol (Toronto: Technoscience Research Unit, 2026)
Fear of a dead white planet
More Worlds Collective, Masco, J., Choy, T., Jake, & Murphy, M. (2025). Fear of a dead white planet. Duke University Press.
Indigenous Environmental Data Justice: Confronting Colonial Data and Activating Indigenous Sovereignty
Yanchapaxi, María Fernanda, and M. Murphy. “Indigenous Environmental Data Justice: Confronting Colonial Data and Activating Indigenous Sovereignty.” Science, Technology, & Human Values (2025). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01622439251343837
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It’s a Mixture of Emotions”: Nail Technicians’ Visual Storytelling of Work and Health
Shadaan, Reena. ““It’s a Mixture of Emotions”: Nail Technicians’ Visual Storytelling of Work and Health.” Qualitative Research in Medicine & Healthcare 9, no. 1 (2025): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.qrmh.2025.100003
Understanding Our Surroundings — Tanks
Gray, Beze, Joel Piche, Layla El‑Dakhakhni, and Vanessa Gray. “Understanding Our Surroundings — Tanks.” The Journal: Serving Sarnia‑Lambton, March 12, 2025. https://www.thesarniajournal.ca/opinion/opinion-opinion-understanding-our-surroundings-tanks-10364915.
COMMUNITY VOICE: Suncors’ Crude Oil Spill on the Gchigami-Ziibii (St.Clair River)
Gray, Beze, Joel Piche, Layla El‑Dakhakhni, and Vanessa Gray. “Community Voice: Suncor’s Crude Oil Spill on the Gchigami‑Ziibii (St. Clair River).” The Journal: Serving Sarnia‑Lambton, April 25, 2025. https://www.thesarniajournal.ca/opinion/community-voice-suncors-crude-oil-spill-on-the-gchigami-ziibii-stclair-river-10563617
Orienting the Sustainable Management of Chemicals and Waste toward Indigenous Knowledge
Ataria, James M., M. Murphy, Deborah McGregor, Susan Chiblow, Bradley J Moggridge, Daniel C. H Hikuroa, Louis A Tremblay, Gunilla Öberg, Virginia Baker, and Bryan W Brooks. “Orienting the Sustainable Management of Chemicals and Waste toward Indigenous Knowledge.” Environmental Science & Technology 57, no. 30 (2023): 10901–3.
Data Colonialism in Canada’s Chemical Valley
Gray, Vanessa, Beze Gray, Fernanda Yanchapaxi, Kristen Bos, and M Murphy.
Special Report published with The Yellowhead Institute, September 2023.
Seed Bead Inheritances and Other Toxicities*
Bos, Kristen. 2023. “Seed Bead Inheritances and Other Toxicities.” In Sketches on Everlasting Plastics, edited by Isabelle Kirkham-Lewitt and Joanna Joseph. Columbia Books on Architecture and the City.
*This piece was also displayed and circulated with original media from artist Claire Johnston (Red River Métis) at the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, May 20, 2023-November 26, 2023.
Chemical Futures and Environmental Data Justice
M. Murphy. “Chemical Futures and Environmental Data Justice.” UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies, no. 21 (2022): 45-48.
Finding a Good Starting Place: An Interview with Scholars in the CLEAR Lab
Yanchapaxi, María Fernanda, Max Liboiron, Katherine Crocker, Deondre Smiles, and Eve Tuck. 2022. “Finding a Good Starting Place: An Interview with Scholars in the CLEAR Lab.” Curriculum Inquiry 52 (2): 162–70.
Image courtesy of the CLEAR Lab Instagram
EDC’s as Industrial Chemicals and Settler Colonial Structures: Towards a Decolonial Feminist Approach
Shadaan, Reena, and M. Murphy. “EDC’s as Industrial Chemicals and Settler Colonial Structures: Towards a Decolonial Feminist Approach.” Catalyst (San Diego, Calif.) 6, no. 1 (2020).
RECOMMENDED READINGS
Expand the lists below for recommended readings in the areas of Environmental Data Justice, Chemicals & Ethical Substance, and Indigenous Science Technology & Environment. Materials authored by TRU Lab members (past and present) are bolded, while other recommended texts are from Indigenous scholars and communities we collaborate with or whose work we admire. If you don’t have access to any of these texts, contact us or the lead author for a copy.
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Gray, Beze, Joel Piche, Layla El‑Dakhakhni, and Vanessa Gray. “Understanding Our Surroundings — Tanks.” The Journal: Serving Sarnia‑Lambton, March 12, 2025. https://www.thesarniajournal.ca/opinion/opinion-opinion-understanding-our-surroundings-tanks-10364915.
Gray, Beze, Joel Piche, Layla El‑Dakhakhni, and Vanessa Gray. “Community Voice: Suncor’s Crude Oil Spill on the Gchigami‑Ziibii (St. Clair River).” The Journal: Serving Sarnia‑Lambton, April 25, 2025. https://www.thesarniajournal.ca/opinion/community-voice-suncors-crude-oil-spill-on-the-gchigami-ziibii-stclair-river-10563617.
TRU EDJ Lab. “Ada Lockridge: Motherhood Through Data Kinship and Anishinabek Teachings.” The Land and the Refinery, 2024. https://www.landandrefinery.org/projects/adas-data
Murphy, M., Vanessa Gray, Beze Gray, Fernanda Yanchapaxi, and Kristen Bos. 2023. “Pollution Notification Map.” 2023. https://www.landandrefinery.org/projects/pollution-notification-map
Murphy, M. “Some Keywords Towards Decolonial Methods: Studying Settler Colonial Histories and Environmental Violence from Tkaronto.” History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History 59, no. 3 (2020): 376–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12165
Wiebe, Andrew. “Zoom’s Scrapped Proposal to Mine User Data Causes Concern about Our Virtual and Private Indigenous Knowledge.” The Conversation, August 15, 2023. https://theconversation.com/zooms-scrapped-proposal-to-mine-user-data-causes-concern-about-our-virtual-and-private-indigenous-knowledge-211577
TRU EDJ Lab. “Community Reimagining Pollution Data.” The Land and the Refinery (2022). https://www.landandrefinery.org/projects/reimagining-pollution-data
Dillon, Lindsey, Rebecca Lave, Becky Mansfield, Sara Wylie, Nicholas Shapiro, Anita Say Chan, and M. Murphy. “Situating Data in a Trumpian Era: The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 109, no. 2 (2019): 545–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2018.1511410
Walker, Dawn, Eric Nost, Aaron Lemelin, Rebecca Lave, and Lindsey Dillon. 2018. “Practicing Environmental Data Justice: From DataRescue to Data Together.” Geo: Geography and Environment 5, no. 2.
Paris, Britt S., Lindsey Dillon, Jennifer Pierre, Irene V. Pasquetto, Emily Marquez, Sara Wylie, M Murphy, et al. 2017. “Pursuing A Toxic Agenda: Environmental Injustice in the Early Trump Administration.” Environmental Data & Governance Initiative. https://envirodatagov.org/publication/pursuing-toxic-agenda.
Fan, Fa-ti, Shun-Ling Chen, Chia-Liang Kao, M. Murphy, Matt Price, and Liz Barry. “Citizens, Politics, and Civic Technology: A Conversation with G0v and EDGI.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 13, no. 2 (2019): 279–97. https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-7542932
Vera, Lourdes A, Dawn Walker, M. Murphy, Becky Mansfield, Ladan Mohamed Siad, and Jessica Ogden. “When Data Justice and Environmental Justice Meet: Formulating a Response to Extractive Logic through Environmental Data Justice.” Information, Communication & Society 22, no. 7 (2019): 1012–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1596293
Dillon, Lindsey, Christopher Sellers, Vivian Underhill, Nicholas Shapiro, Jennifer Liss Ohayon, Marianne Sullivan, Phil Brown, Jill Harrison, and Sara Wylie. “The Environmental Protection Agency in the Early Trump Administration: Prelude to Regulatory Capture.” American Journal of Public Health 108, no. S2 (2018): S89–94. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304360
Murphy, M. “Against Population, Towards Alterlife.” In Making Kin Not Population, edited by Adele E. Clarke and Donna J. Haraway, 101-124. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2018.
Murphy, M., Max Liboiron, Natasha Myers, Dayna Scott, and Reena Shadaan. 2017. “Pollution Is Colonialism.” Endocrine Disruptors Action Group and CLEAR, September. https://endocrinedisruptorsaction.org/2017/09/18/pollution-is-colonialism/.
Sellers, Christopher, Lindsey Dillon, Jennifer Liss Ohayon, Nick Shapiro, Marianne Sullivan, Chris Amoss, Stephen Bocking, et al. 2017. “The EPA Under Siege.” Environmental Data & Governance Initiative. https://envirodatagov.org/publication/the-epa-under-siege.
Pariyadath, Renu, and Reena Shadaan. 2014. “Solidarity after Bhopal: Building a Transnational Environmental Justice Movement.” Environmental Justice 7 (5): 146–50. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2014.0013.
Shadaan, Reena. 2014. “I Know about My Own Body.... They Lied": Environmental Justice, and the Contestation of Knowledge Claims in Institute, WV, and Old Bhopal, India.” Canadian Woman Studies 31 (1–2).
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Shadaan, Reena. ““It’s a Mixture of Emotions”: Nail Technicians’ Visual Storytelling of Work and Health.” Qualitative Research in Medicine & Healthcare 9, no. 1 (2025): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.qrmh.2025.100003
Shadaan, Reena, and Bridget Buglioni. ““We Are Actually Remade by Each Other”: A Conversation with Dr. Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu.” Women and Environments International Magazine (2024): 42–47. https://www.yorku.ca/weimag/CURRENTISSUE/images/102_WEI_Final.pdf
Shadaan, Reena. “Multiscalar Toxicities: Counter-Mapping Worker’s Health in the Nail Salon.” Labour / Le Travail 93 (2024):195–222. https://doi.org/10.52975/llt.2024v93.010Shadaan, Reena. “Healthier Nail Salons: From Feminized to Collective Responsibilities of Care.” Environmental Justice no. 16 (2023): 62–71. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2021.0097
Liboiron, Max. “Why Pollution Is as Much about Colonialism as Chemicals — Don’t Call Me Resilient Transcript EP 11.” The Conversation, November 3, 2021. https://theconversation.com/why-pollution-is-as-much-about-colonialism-as-chemicals-dont-call-me-resilient-transcript-ep-11-170697
Murphy, M., and Konstantin Georgiev. July 17, 2020. “Technoscience: Season 1.” https://open.spotify.com/episode/1m5UebvFHtNUMdd56k53SR
Murphy, M. “Alterlife and Decolonial Chemical Relations.” Cultural Anthropology 32, no. 4 (2017): 494–503. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca32.4.02
Shadaan, Reena. 2016. “Boycotts, Divestment and the Bhopal Movement: An Interview with Rachna Dhingra.” Women and Environments International, 96/97, 10-13.
Murphy, M., Max Liboiron, Natasha Myers, Dayna Scott, Reena Shadaan, and Jessica Caprusso. 2016. “Toxic by Design: Eliminating Harmful Flame Retardant Chemicals from Our Bodies, Homes, & Communities.” Endocrine Disruptors Action Group and CLEAR, October. https://endocrinedisruptorsaction.org/2016/10/11/toxic-by-design/.
Murphy, M. “Not Knowing about the Chemicals in Our Bodies.” Canada Watch (2015): 23-25. https://doi.org/10.25071/8t34bf31
Shadaan, Reena. 2014. “Mahila shakti aa rahi hai… phool nahi chingari hai! Celebrating women-activists: Rashida Bi, Champa Devi Shukla and the Chingari Awards.” Women and Environments International Magazine, 92/93, 33-34.
Murphy, M. “Chemical Infrastructures of the St Clair River.” In Toxicants, Health and Regulation since 1945, edited by Nathalie Jas and Soraya Boudia, 103-116. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Murphy, M. “Chemical Regimes of Living.” Environmental History 13, no. 4 (2008): 695–703. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25473297
Murphy, M. “Exposed On the Inside.” Log (New York, NY), no. 10 (2007): 109–14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41765168
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More Worlds Collective, Masco, J., Choy, T., Jake, & Murphy, M. (2025). Fear of a dead white planet. Duke University Press.
Yanchapaxi, María Fernanda, and M. Murphy. “Indigenous Environmental Data Justice: Confronting Colonial Data and Activating Indigenous Sovereignty.” Science, Technology, & Human Values (2025).https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01622439251343837
Bos, Kristen. Forthcoming. The Interrogation Room. Alchemy by Knopf.Wiebe, Andrew. “We Can Learn a Lot from Beaver Dams — According to Both Indigenous Oral History and NASA Researchers.” The Conversation, November 20, 2024. https://theconversation.com/when-building-indigenous-infrastructure-build-relationally-like-beavers-239553
Wiebe, Andrew. “Born from Lithium Minds: A Guide on Mapping Digital Kinship.” iJournal 10, no. 1 (2024): 49–63.
Hamraie, Aimi, and Max Liboiron. Oct 30, 2024. “Solidarity Chat 9: Max Liboiron.” https://www.criticaldesignlab.com/podcast/episode-32
Pyne, Stephanie, David Valeri, and Andrew Wiebe. “Mapping Assiniboia Residential School Survivor Stories: Did You See Us?” Cartouche, no. 100 (2023): 20–22.
Bos, Kristen, and Daniella Sanader. 2021. “Turning the Tables on Research: A Q&A with Kristen Bos of U of T’s Technoscience Research Unit.” Art Museum at the University of Toronto. September 21, 2021. https://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/virtual-spotlight/turning-the-tables-on-research-a-qa-with-kristen-bos-of-u-of-ts-technoscience-research-unit/
EDAction & Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR). 2018. “Pollution Is Colonialism.” Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 2018. http://archive.blackwoodgallery.ca/publications/SDUK_01_Grafting.pdf
Murphy, M. “What Can’t a Body Do?” Catalyst (San Diego, Calif.) 3, no. 1 (2017): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v3i1.28791
Editorial Board. “Introduction to the Inaugural Issue of Catalyst.” Catalyst (San Diego, Calif.) 1, no. 1 (2015): 1-11. https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v1i1.28823
Murphy, M., Paisley Currah, and Monica J Casper. “Distributed Reproduction.” In Corpus, edited by Monica J. Casper and Paisley Currah, 21–38. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119536_2
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Konsmo, Erin. 2022. "The scale of our relations: Reflections on the practice of fish scale art." Refractions: A Journal of Postcolonial Cultural Criticism no. 1.https://www.refractionsajournalofpostcolonialculturalcriticism.com/konsmo
Benjamin, Ruha. 2016a. “Catching Our Breath: Critical Race STS and the Carceral Imagination.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 2 (July):145–56.https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2016.70.
———. 2016b. “Informed Refusal: Toward a Justice-Based Bioethics.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 41 (6): 967–90.https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243916656059.
———. 2022. Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Coburn, Elaine, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, George Sefa Dei, and Makere Stewart-Harawira. 2013. “Unspeakable Things: Indigenous Research and Social Science.” Socio, no. 2 (December), 331–48.https://doi.org/10.4000/socio.524.
“Curiosities (My Heart Makes My Head Swim).” 2020. In Dear Science and Other Stories, by Katherine McKittrick, 1–13. Duke University Press.https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478012573-002.
Duarte, Marisa Elena. 2017. Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet across Indian Country. Indigenous Confluences. Seattle: University of Washington.
Hobart, Hiʻilei Julia. 2022. Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment. Elements. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kolopenuk, Jessica. 2020. “Miskâsowin: Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society.” Genealogy 4 (1): 21.https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy4010021.
LaDuke, Winona, and Deborah Cowen. 2020. “Beyond Wiindigo Infrastructure.” South Atlantic Quarterly 119 (2): 243–68.https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-8177747.
Liboiron, Max. 2021. Pollution Is Colonialism. Durham London: Duke University Press.
Maynard, Robyn, and Leanne Simpson. 2022. Rehearsals for Living. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf.
McKittrick, Katherine. 2014. “Mathematics Black Life.” The Black Scholar 44 (2): 16–28.https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2014.11413684.
———. 2021. Dear Science and Other Stories. Errantries. Durham London: Duke University Press.https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478012573.
Murphy, M. 2017. “Alterlife and Decolonial Chemical Relations.” Cultural Anthropology 32 (4): 494–503.https://doi.org/10.14506/ca32.4.02.
Rodriguez-Lonebear, Desi. 2016. “Building a Data Revolution in Indian Country.” In Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an Agenda, edited by Tahu Kukutai and John Taylor, 253–72. ANU Press.
Simmons, Kristen. 2017. “Settler Atmospherics.” Cultural Anthropology (blog). November 20, 2017.https://culanth.org/fieldsights/settler-atmospherics.
Simpson, Leanne. 2021. A Short History of the Blockade: Giant Beavers, Diplomacy, and Regeneration in Nishnaabewin. CLC Kreisel Lecture Series. Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press.
Todd, Zoe. 2017. “Fish, Kin and Hope: Tending to Water Violations in Amiskwaciwâskahikan and Treaty Six Territory.” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 43 (March):102–7.https://doi.org/10.1086/692559.
Walter, Maggie. 2016. Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Research Methodology. London New York: Routledge.https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315426570.
Watson-Verran, Helen, and David Turnbull. 1995. “Science and Other Indigenous Knowledge Systems.” In Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, by Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald Markle, James Peterson, and Trevor Pinch, 114–39. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks California 91320 United States of America: SAGE Publications, Inc.https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412990127.n6.
Watts, Vanessa. 2013. “Indigenous Place-Thought & Agency amongst Humans and Non-Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go on a European World Tour!).” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2 (1): 20–34.
Whyte, Kyle. 2017. “Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” English Language Notes 55 (1–2): 153–62.https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-55.1-2.153.
Yang, K. Wayne. 2017. A Third University Is Possible. Forerunners: Ideas First from the University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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Adams, Melinda M. 2024. “Indigenous Fire Data Sovereignty: Applying Indigenous Data Sovereignty Principles to Fire Research.” Fire 7 (7): 222. https://doi.org/10.3390/fire7070222.
Carroll, Stephanie Russo, Marisa Duarte, Max Liboiron. 2024. “Indigenous Data Sovereignty.” In “Keywords of the Datafied State.” by Burrell, Jenna, Ranjit Singh, and Patrick Davison. SSRN Electronic Journal, 2024. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4734250.
Carroll, Stephanie Russo, Edit Herczog, Maui Hudson, Keith Russell, and Shelley Stall. 2021. “Operationalizing the CARE and FAIR Principles for Indigenous Data Futures.” Scientific Data 8 (1). Nature Publishing Group: 108. doi:10.1038/s41597-021-00892-0.
Carroll, Stephanie Russo, Ibrahim Garba, Oscar L. Figueroa-Rodríguez, Jarita Holbrook, Raymond Lovett, Simeon Materechera, Mark Parsons, et al. 2020. “The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.” Data Science Journal 19 (November):43. https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-043.
David-Chavez, Dominique M., Michael C. Gavin, Norma Ortiz, Shelly Valdez, and Stephanie Russo Carroll. 2024. “A Values-Centered Relational Science Model: Supporting Indigenous Rights and Reconciliation in Research.” Ecology and Society 29 (2). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-14768-290211.
Hudson, Maui, Stephanie Russo Carroll, Jane Anderson, Darrah Blackwater, Felina M. Cordova-Marks, Jewel Cummins, Dominique David-Chavez, et al. 2023. “Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Data: A Contribution toward Indigenous Research Sovereignty.” Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics 8 (May):1173805. https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2023.1173805.
Lovett, Raymond, Vanessa Lee, Tahu Kukutai, Donna Cormack, Stephanie Carroll Rainie, and Jennifer Walker. n.d. “2: GOOD DATA PRACTICES FOR INDIGENOUS DATA SOVEREIGNTY AND GOVERNANCE.” In , 26–36.
Rainie, Stephanie Carroll, Tahu Kukutai, Maggie Walter, Oscar Luis Figueroa-Rodriguez, Jennifer Walker, and Per Axelsson. 2019. “Issues in Open Data: Indigenous Data Sovereignty.” Magazine. State of Open Data. African Minds; International Development Research Center.
https://www.d4d.net/state-of-open-data/chapters/issues/indigenous-data/v1
Taylor, John, and Tahu Kukutai, eds. 2016. Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an Agenda. Acton, ACT, Australia: Australian National University Press.
Walter, Maggie, ed. 2021. Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy. Routledge Studies in Indigenous Peoples and Policy. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge.
Walter, Maggie, and Michele Suina. 2019. “Indigenous Data, Indigenous Methodologies and Indigenous Data Sovereignty.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 22 (3): 233–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2018.1531228.