Dr. Myra J Hird, Full Professor, School of Environmental Studies, Queen’s University
Topic: Canada’s Waste Crisis and What We Can do About it
Myra J. Hird, D.Phil. (Oxford), FRSC, is a Full Professor in the School of Environmental Studies at Queen’s University and a distinguished interdisciplinary scholar with an international reputation for her multifaceted, collaborative investigations into science studies and environmental issues. Hird represented Canada at the G7 Microplastics Paris meeting (2019) and earned the Queen’s Excellence in Research Prize (2015). She has earned over $11 million in external research funding and has published 12 books and over 80 articles and book chapters on a diversity of topics relating to waste, science studies, material engagements with the environment and inhumanism, and I-EDIAA. Hird's latest book, co-authored with Hillary Predko, is entitled Extracting Reconciliation: Inhuman Wastes, Indigenous Lands, and Colonial Reckoning (Routledge Press, in press). The book argues that reconciliation constitutes a critical contemporary mechanism through which colonialism is seeking to ensure continuing access to Indigenous lands and resources. Canada’s Waste Flows (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021) critically explores Canada’s waste crisis and particularly the role of ongoing settler colonialism in creating and maintaining this crisis. A Public Sociology of Waste (2022, Bristol University Press) explores waste as a crisis in global democracy. Dr. Hird is the Director of Waste Flows, an interdisciplinary research project focused on waste as a global scientific-technical and socio-ethical issue. Through her critically acclaimed books and articles, collaborations and public engagement activities, Hird explores how social sciences and humanities may engage with scientific knowledge to better respond to a wide range of global issues, including waste. Dr. Hird is regularly featured on the media outlets such as the CBC’s The National, the BBC, Canadian Geographic and CTV news.
Myra Hird
