Onyx Sloan Morgan

(They, Them, Theirs)

Assistant Professor

Community, Culture and Global Studies, Community Engagement, Social Change, Equity, Indigenous Knowledges, Sustainability (IGS)

Other Titles: Principal’s Research Chair (Tier II) in Communities, Justice, and Sustainability
Office: ART 252
Office Hours: Please email for the term’s office hours
Email: onyx.sloanmorgan@ubc.ca

Research Summary

Socio-legal geographies; resource extraction; wild/fireclimate justice; queer geographies; settler colonialism; youth-led research; modern treaties

Courses & Teaching

GEOG 217: Geographies of BC; GEOG 358: Gender, Place & Culture; GEOG 460: Critical Geographies of the Anthropocene; GEOG/GWST 426: Queer Geographies; ANTH/GEOG/GWST/INDG: Interdisciplinary Seminar; IGS 550: Voice, Justice, Change

Biography

My research is most often conducted in partnership with and at the direction of communities. My positionality as a queer, non-binary white settler of Irish and Scottish ancestries steers my engagement. Having grown up on unceded Lekwungen territories, my research seeks to: 1) reveal the interpersonal to structural power dynamics that create and perpetuate climate injustices, and 2) foreground the resistive and transformative actions that are enlivened every day for community-centred climate justice and sustainability.

Degrees

PhD, Queen’s University
MES, Dalhousie University
BA, University of Victoria

Research Interests & Projects

Two overlapping threads combine in my research program: 1) socio-legal and anti-colonial geographies; and 2) Indigenous-led & Youth-led climate justice. Interwoven throughout these threads of research are gender and intersectional analyses, which I understand as inherent to critical interrogation of settler coloniality.

My research on socio-legal and anti-colonial geographies bridges political ecology, political economy, Indigenous studies, and legal geographies with climate justice to interrogate the mechanisms that settler coloniality employs to seek its continuity through climate crises. This area of my research program has emerged from community-identified priorities, specifically, the increasingly disparate impacts of wild/fires on communities across British Columbia (BC). Supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant, my current project entitled ‘Tracing the Settler Colonial Legacies of Insurance: From Empire to Wildfires in British Columbia’ asks: How does property insurance intersect with settler authority in the volatile context of wildfires in British Columbia? This research explores how colonial mechanisms, such as the socio-legal ordering of insurance and creation of urban space, prop up settler authority to reveal the uneven and heightening effects of wild/fire as climate injustice.

My research on Indigenous-led and youth-led climate justice has emerged from longstanding research partnerships with First Nations in what is now known as BC who are navigating pathways to self-governance and self-determination. My work in this area follows the Assembly of First Nation’s 2020 National Climate Gathering Report, which asserts that “…addressing the climate crisis cannot be separated from the broader project of First Nations self-determination and reconciliation”. I have long worked in partnership with First Nations navigating BC’s modern treaty contexts, and with First Nations experiencing intergenerational impacts of resource extraction. I also continue to prioritize youth-led projects as they enact justice-based initiatives today and into the future.

Selected Publications & Presentations

Sloan Morgan, O. (2026). Towards Socio-Legal Geographies of Fire. Geography Compass. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.70079

Sloan Morgan, O. (2026). Tracing the settler colonial legacies of insurance: From empire to wildfires in British Columbia, Canada. Geoforum, 170, 104544. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104544

Sloan Morgan, O., Huu-ay-aht First Nations, & Castleden, H. (2025). ‘A bureaucracy within a bureaucracy’: The Department of Fisheries and Oceans and relationships under the Maa-nulth Treaty. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 43(7), 1426–1446. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544251334524

Sloan Morgan, O., & Burr, J. (2024). The political ecologies of fire: Recasting fire geographies in British Columbia, Canada. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 7(4), 1918–1934. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241235836

Sloan Morgan, O., Melchior, F., Thomas, K., & McNab‐Coombs, L. (2024). Youth and climate justice: Representations of young people in action for sustainable futures. The Geographical Journal, 190(1), e12547. https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12547

Sloan Morgan, O., Kennedy, R., Huu-ay-aht First Nations, & Castleden, H. (2023). The Living Nature of a Modern Treaty: Preparing for the Maa-nulth Treaty’s First Periodic Review. BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly. Winter 2022/23(no. 216), 41-71.

For publications before 2023 and book chapters, see: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?hl=en&user=trc6h3QAAAAJ

Professional Services/Affiliations/Committees

Member of the ACME Collective and Editor-in-Chief ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies

Indigenous Knowledges / iʔ sqilxʷ aʔ cmiy̓ t smypnwíłnsəlx, Sustainability, & Community Engagement, Social Change, Equity Theme Member, School of Graduate Studies, UBC Okanagan

Steering Committee Member, UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice

Advisory Committee Member, Health Arts Research Centre, University of Northern British Columbia

Research Member, Institute for Community Engaged Research, UBC Okanagan