Audra Mitchell

Professor Audra Mitchell

Early Career Fellow 2014-15, Small Group Project 2016

Posthuman Security: An Integrated Ethical Framework

The purpose of this project is to develop a framework that will enable security actors to respond to the ethical challenges raised by nonhumans in situations such as wars and disasters. In existing security discourses, human beings are framed as the only relevant actors, in both ethical and pragmatic terms. Yet security situations are shaped by a range of nonhumans that Bruno Latour terms ‘actants’: beings that can collectively affect change in the world without possessing agency, subjectivity, or intentionality. In security contexts, actants can create threats, and they may be owed protection from humans in their own right.

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Mass Extinction: Indigenous Visions

The earth is experiencing a sharp increase in extinctions, which may produce a ‘sixth mass extinction event’ in just a few centuries. Mass Extinction: Indigenous Visions will engage with indigenous communities from around the world to develop a pluralistic conceptual framework for responding to this crisis. It aims to criticize, decolonize and pluralize existing conceptions of extinction and mass extinction, which draw solely on Western secular scientific ontology. Furthermore, it will contribute to creating a global-ethical framework for addressing the ontological and ethical dimensions of the unfolding extinction crisis.

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Research outcomes

Theriault, N., Leduc, T., Mitchell, A., Rubis, J. M., & Jacobs Gaehowako, N. (2020).

Living protocols: remaking worlds in the face of extinction. Social & Cultural Geography, 21(7), 893–908.

Mitchell, A. (2020).

Revitalizing laws, (re)-making treaties, dismantling violence: Indigenous resurgence against ‘the sixth mass extinction.’ Social & Cultural Geography, 21(7), 909–924.

Areas of interest

Political Ecology International Studies Environment Environmental Geography Environmental Humanities Philosophy Security Environmental Ethics Indigenous People Landscape Ecology Extinction Animal Rights Violence

Cohort

ECF2 RRG1

Biography

Audra Mitchell (she/her or they/them) holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Political Ecology at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and the Department of Political Science. From 2015-18, Audra held the CIGI Chair in Global Governance and Ethics at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Professor Mitchell has previously worked at the University of York, UK (2010-15) and the University of St. Andrews, UK (2009-10), and has held visiting fellowships at the Universities of Queensland (Australia) and Edinburgh (UK). Audra completed a PhD in Politics and International Studies at the Queen’s University of Belfast, UK (2009).

Deeply multi-disciplinary in nature, Audra’s work has made seminal contributions in and across the fields of international studies, global and international environmental studies, international theory and philosophy, security studies, the environmental humanities, geography and other fields. For instance, it has been instrumental in shaping more-than-human discourses of international theory and ethics, and in analyzing the relationships between global structural violence and ecological collapse. Audra’s recent work engages diverse Indigenous knowledge systems to re-frame how global patterns of plant and animal extinction are understood and addressed. It has also sparked new conversations about anti-oppressive approaches to global threats and processes of futuring, foregrounding the knowledge systems of globally-marginalized communities.

Professor Mitchell is a disabled (Autistic, Dyspraxic and physically disabled) scholar, whose lived experience and commitment to intersectional disability justice informs their ongoing work on global patterns of violence, exclusion and marginalization.

Biographical details correct as of 18.05.26