RESEARCH FELLOW

M. Fernanda Yanchapaxi (she/her) is a Research Fellow at the Technoscience Research Unit in the Indigenous Science, Technology, and Environment Studies (ISTES) Hub. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Social Justice Education Program, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), at the University of Toronto. Fernanda’s research work focuses on the areas and intersections of intellectual property, Indigenous data sovereignty, and Indigenous research methodologies. She is interested in the ways in which Indigenous peoples form, access, use, and protect data and Indigenous knowledge and examines and highlights how Indigenous researchers do so through their research practices and the ways in which they enact principles of Indigenous data sovereignty and data governance.  She is Kichwa-Panzaleo/Mestiza, born and raised in Ecuador.

CO-DIRECTOR OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL DATA JUSTICE LAB

Vanessa Gray (she/her)is Co-Director of the Environmental Data Justice Lab at the Technoscience Research Unit. She is an Anishnaabe kwe from Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Canada’s Chemical Valley. She is a long time advocate and educator of connecting Indigenous rights to Health and Environmental Protection. Her experience growing up in an Indigenous community surrounded by petrochemical facilities has led to her grassroots organizing including teach-ins, rallies, blockades, and direct action against companies and projects infringing on traditional and inherent rights. She firmly stands in solidarity with many communities and nations faced with similar struggles. She is co-founder of ASAP- Aamjiwnaang & Sarnia Against Pipelines, an Indigenous grassroots led group that organizes Toxic Tours, leading water ceremonies, and presentations on Environmental Racism in Canada.

COMMUNITY RESEARCHER

Beze Gray (they/them) is a Community Researcher of the Environmental Data Justice Lab at the Technoscience Research Unit. Beze is a two-spirit Anishnaabe, Delaware, and Oneida from Aamjiwnaang First Nation, treaty #29 territory. Beze is also a Youth Coordinator of the Niizh Manidook Hide Camp and one of the Producers of a grassroots documentary from the Kiijig Collective. Beze is a member of the Jiibwaabiigamowag Young Peoples Council (Aamjiwnaang Youth Council) and Co-founder of Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia Against Pipelines. Beze is a grassroots organizer, and has organized cultural and environmental gatherings and actions, including Toxic Tours, Niizh Manidook Hide Camp, and Aamjiwnaang Water Gathering. They focus on re-telling their experience of living in Canada’s Chemical Valley and promoting Indigenous culture/ language resurgence. Beze also practices Anishnaabemowin, sugar bushing, hide tanning, seed saving, and structure making

LAB ASSISTANT

Joel Piché (he/him) is a Lab Assistant with the Environmental Data Justice Lab at the Technoscience Research Unit, as well as Academic Advisor for Aamjiwnaang First Nation. Joel is from Aamjiwnaang First Nation. He has a degree in accounting from Western University and is passionate about using data and research to help his community prosper.

STAFF RESEARCH SCHOLAR

Dr. Reena Shadaan (she/her) is the Staff Research Scholar in STS and Sustainability at the Technoscience Research Unit and Acceleration Consortium as well as an affiliate faculty member at the Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI) at the University of Toronto. Shadaan is an award-winning community-based and justice-oriented researcher with a PhD in Environmental Studies (York University) and an MA in Gender Studies and Feminist Research (McMaster University). Her work intersects environmental, occupational, and reproductive justice and focuses on community-defined embodied and experiential knowledges. To date, Shadaan’s focus has spanned various sites of chemical violence and resistance – from Bhopal, India (site of the Bhopal gas disaster) to Canada’s “Chemical Valley” and to Greater Toronto Area-based nail salons.

STAFF RESEARCH SCHOLAR

Erin Konsmo (they/she) is a Staff Research Scholar in Indigenous Science, Technology and Environment at the Technoscience Research Unit and Acceleration Consortium. Erin is an Alberta-raised Métis (citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation and registered Métis harvester) fisher, mixed-media artist and scholar. With a background in environmental studies, Erin's research interests include climate justice, Indigenous harvesting practices, fishing, arts-based methodologies, feminist and queer theories, and politicized healing and embodiment. Their arts practice currently focuses on fish scale art, a land-based arts practice that includes harvesting fish, processing and cleaning the scales, as well as the vertebrae and bones to create intricate florals. Erin is also a somatic practitioner and educator in climate and social justice movement spaces and believes in the body as a place for transformation towards what we care about.

RESEARCHER

Vanbasten de Araújo (they/them) is a Researcher with the Technoscience Research Unit since 2020. de Araújo is a Brazilian scholar interested in decolonial science and technology studies in Latin America, especially in Brazil. They have a BA in International Relations from the University of Brasília in Brazil and an MA (High Honors) in Critical Gender Studies from the Central European University in Vienna, Austria. As a PhD Candidate at the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto, de Araújo researches chemical exposure related to agricultural and public health policies in 20th-century Brazil. In their dissertation, they are interested in connecting state-sponsored chemical exposure to eugenics ideologies in the country. de Araújo’s research is supported by the University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies, the Connaught Scholarship, and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship.

VISITING RESEARCHER

Jennie Jiang (she/her) is a Visiting Researcher at the Technoscience Research Unit and a fourth-year Ph.D. Student in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University. Her current research interests include taking a feminist science studies approach to understanding endocrine-disrupting chemicals, a subset of environmental toxins that affect sex and reproductive systems in human and nonhuman animals. She is broadly interested in how uneven geographies of toxicity are shaped by settler colonialism and racial capitalism. Jennie also currently serves as the Graduate Project Manager of Insurgent Intersections: Combating Global Anti-Blackness, a multi-year project hosted by the Department of Africana Studies at Rutgers University – New Brunswick. In her spare time, you can find her cooking, sewing, and reading fiction.

RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Andrew Wiebe (he/them) is a Research Assistant with the Technoscience Research Unit. Andrew is an Indigi-Queer (Red River Michif) PhD student at the Faculty of Information. He thinks about how beavers may inspire ways of building Indigenous and Queer stories into traditional archival & data practices. The beaver offers a relational imagination of how to build Indigenous memory into institutions by being attentive to how dam-building regenerates ecosystems while selecting what is destroyed. Building a dam in the archive involves forming a structured space of diplomacy between these two worlds, where Indigenous Knowledge can structurally coexist with traditional archival practice. Andrew’s research is supported by the TRU’s research objectives and core values.

RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Layla El-Dakhakhni (she/he) is a Research Assistant with the Technoscience Research Unit and a recipient of the University of Toronto Excellence Award. Layla is an abolitionist community worker from Hamilton, Ontario, and further back from Cairo, Egypt. She is an undergraduate student double majoring in Environmental Chemistry and the History & Philosophy of Science. Layla founded and serves on the steering committee of the Liberation Lab, a student group dreaming and building in the intersections of hard science and movements for liberation. For more information on the Liberation Lab, visit: www.instagram.com/liberationlabuoft

CO-ORGANIZER OF TECHNOSCIENCE SALON

Rohini Patel (she/her)is the co-organizer of the TRU Salon Series. Rohini is a historian and environmental researcher, and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at McMaster University. Rohini completed her PhD in History at the University of Toronto, during which she collaborated with other TRU lab members through reading and working groups. Her research focuses on modern histories of science, technology, and environments as they intersect with histories of empire and colonialism. Rohini is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively called Chemical Modernities.

CO-ORGANIZER OF TECHNOSCIENCE SALON

Sajdeep Soomal (he/him) is the co-organizer of the TRU Salon Series and a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto, writing about the history and philosophy of chemical governance in 19th-century Canada. His dissertation, The Chemicalization of Substance, explores how chemistry shaped settler colonists' engagements with the Canadian environment, influencing economic thought, legal governance, and artistic expression. His research is currently supported by the Graduate Fellowship in Sustainability Transitions at the IECS, the Northrop Frye Centre Doctoral Fellowship at Victoria College, and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Sajdeep works on related curatorial projects about the politics of chemical visualization with artists who are re-imagining, playing with and altering our synthetic surround. Sajdeep has recently conducted research and curatorial projects for the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), and The Reach Gallery Museum.