About the author

Audra Mitchell (she/her or they/them) is a white (Ukrainian/British) disabled person who currently lives and works as an uninvited intergenerational guest on Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe lands. She is a Professor at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and the department of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University (with cross-appointments in Geography and in Political Science at the University of Waterloo) Audra holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Political Ecology at Wilfrid Laurier University. From 2015-18 she held the CIGI Chair in Global Governance and Ethics at the Balsillie School of International Affairs  . Previously, Audra worked at the department of Politics, University of York, UK, and the University of St. Andrews, UK. Audra completed their PhD at the Queen’s University of Belfast in 2009.

Audra’s current research is focused several several linked themes

• Global patterns of structural violence (including colonisation, genocide, land-based gendered and sexual violence and extractives) and their impact on extinction and other forms of ecological violence;
• environmental ableisms and their intersections with other forms of violent; critical, intersectional disabled/crip futures and ecologies
• Anti-oppressive futurisms
• design and making as sources of violence and resistance.

Some of Audra’s recent publications on these themes address: Autistic political ecologies;  white apocalyptic visions and BIPOC futurisms , Yolngu and other Indigenous accounts of outer space law , counter-narratives of extinction drawn from Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Nêhiyaw legal orders, reflections on working as part of an Indigenous/non-Indigenous research collective , how the concept of ‘extinction’ affects international relations theory, and ways of re-thinking the meaning and subjects of extinction 

Audra’s fourth book, (Bio)plurality: Global Extinction and Indigenous Resistance is under contract with the University of Minnesota Press. Learning from multiple currently-marginalized knowledge systems, it re-frames plant and animal extinctions and the ‘Sixth Mass Extinction Event’ in terms of structural violence. To protect earth’s (bio)plural worlds, it calls for divestment from mainstream conservation and the large-scale redirection of energy in support of movements for anti-oppression, anti- and decolonization, land return, disability justice and multi-species justice.

Audra is currently developing a new body of work that examines how Autistic ecologies (including distinct forms of sensory experience, communication and ways of relating to nonhumans), can contribute to the imagination of inclusive eco-political futures.

Audra’s earlier work focused on how violence, security and global ethics relate to more-than-human beings.  Prior to that, she examined how large scale violence is embodied in and conduced by large-scale peace interventions. Her work in these areas  is published in : International Intervention in a Secular Age: Re-enchanting Humanity? (Routledge, 2014),  Lost in Transformation: Violent Peace and Peaceful Conflict in Northern Ireland (Palgrave, 2011) and (ed. with Oliver Richmond) Hybrid Forms of Peace: From the Everyday to Post-liberalism (Palgrave, 2011) . She is also the author of articles in Political Geography,  Security Dialogue, Review of International Studies, Millennium, Third World Quarterly, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, International Peace-keeping, Alternatives and other international journals. From 2013-14, Audra was a fellow of the Independent Social Research Foundation. In Febrary – April 2014, she was a visiting fellow in the School of Political Science and International studies at the University of Queensland, Australia.

** If you would like to re-post or republish any work on this blog, please contact Audra for permission prior to doing so **

Some of Audra’s talks and broadcasts are available online:

“Remembrance Day for Lost Species 2020“, ONCA, Bristol, UK, 30 November 2020.

“(Bio)plurality” University of New South Wales Seminar,  Sydney, Australia, 7 February 2017.

“The Meaning of Extinction“,  The Philosopher’s Zone, Australian Broadcasting Corporation National Radio, November 2014. Read the blog about the broadcast here. 

“Mass Extinction and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals” 2030+ Innovation Challenges in Food and Health Security Panel, BSIA, October 2015.

“Posthuman Security” ISRF Podcasts, June 2015.

“Worldly Security”, Security Dialogue Podcasts, December 2014.

“Enormities and the Ethical Geography of Harm”  Posthuman Security Workshop, June 2014.