Sheena Wilson, PhD

Sheena Wilson is a professor of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta, co-founder & director of the international Petrocultures Research Group, and research lead on Just Powers. Her research interests involve an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to studying how the extractivist world-view that has contributed to climate change through the exploitation of land and resources, likewise allows for the exploitation of gendered, classed and racialized bodies, and the erasure of knowledge held by those bodies. Given that mobilizing against climate change can be overwhelming, she argues for a focus on power shift—literally in terms of energy transition, and figuratively in terms of social justice—as a means to anchor feminist and decolonial political movements striving for climate justice. A commitment to feminism and decolonization as method and praxis, as well as object of study, informs her current research projects: 1) the first is a SSHRC-funded project called Feminist Energy Futures: Power Shift and Environmental Social Justice (SSHRC) co-led by Dr. Sourayan Mookerjea; the other two are Canada First Research Excellence (CEFREF)-funded Energy Humanities projects she leads as part of the larger Future Energy Systems project at the U of A, called 2) Speculative Energy Futures co-led by Dr. Natalie Loveless and 3) iDoc co-led by Dr. Sourayan Mookerjea. Wilson’s publication highlights include Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Cultures w/ Adam Carlson and Imre Szeman (MQUP, 2017); “Gendering Oil: Tracing Western Petrosexual Relations” (2014); and Sighting Oil w/Andrew Pendakis (2012). Her monograph in process is called Deep Energy Literacy: Toward Feminist Energy Futures.