Dr. Max Liboiron is leader in both developing and promoting anticolonial research methods into a wide array of disciplines and spaces. As founder of CLEAR, an interdisciplinary plastic pollution laboratory whose methods foreground humility and good land relations, Liboiron has influenced national policy on both plastics and Indigenous research, invented technologies and protocols for community monitoring of Plastics, and led the development of the interdisciplinary field of discard studies.
Can everyone please name one thoughtful academic whose work is undersung, and whose research could be better supported? ... Most inspiring scholar this week is Max Liboiron who runs a Lab in Newfoundland based on Indigenous principles. It works for people, for research, for the local community, for the environment. twitter site
Taking plastic pollution as its case study, this text is primarily a methods text that makes the case that methodology is always a land relation. Focusing on plastic pollution, the book models an anticolonial scientific practice aligned with Indigenous, particularly Métis, concepts of land, ethics, and relations.
We open the black box of what seem like mundane laboratory practices: choosing author order on papers (episode 1), choosing the values that guide the lab (episode 2), and how we run lab meetings (episode 3). The films show that these activities are far from mundane, but are the main vehicals for equity, humility, accountability, and the creation of a lab collective. Our goal: to do science differently, in ways that do not replicate existing power dynamics.