Sonia Grant, PhD Candidate, University of Chicago

I am a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Chicago, where my dissertation research looks at the political ecologies of oil and gas development in the Four Corners region of the United States. I am particularly interested in the history of extraction technologies and technoscience; toxicity; property regimes; settler colonialism; nationalisms; knowledge production in the atmospheric and geophysical sciences; questions of scale in environmental politics; and affect.

I completed a BA in International Development Studies from Dalhousie University in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a MA in Geography from the University of Toronto, where my research looked at pipeline politics in the Great Lakes region, and specially, the psychosocial aftermath of a major pipeline oil spill in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. My research and political work outside of academia has been grounded in a commitment to the principles of environmental justice.