Benjamin J. Kapron, Ph.D.

(he/him)

I am an early-career, interdisciplinary scholar, working primarily in Environmental Humanities and Field Philosophy. Engaging with ecofeminist scholarship, I consider ongoing environmental crises and oppressive structures—including settler colonialism, white supremacy, and heteronormative patriarchy—to be undergirded by understandings and assumptions of dominant Western ontologies. Much of my research is, therefore, concerned with cross-ontological ethics, exploring how other ontological systems—ones which take seriously that ethical relationships ought to be maintained with a diverse cacophony of beings, including animals, plants, waters, rocks, and other more-than-human beings—might provide inspiration and aspirations for the transformational realization of other worlds in which to live, while also addressing what it means and looks like to engage with other ontologies in a good and ethical way.

 

I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at the University of Western Ontario. I am undertaking a research project entitled "Multispecies Thanatography: Attending to Dead and Dying Non-Human Animals Amidst Mass Extinction," with funding from a Government of Canada Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Research Award and under the supervision of Dr. Joshua Schuster. In this project, I am considering how to better attend to and care for dead and dying other-than-human animals by exploring how the dead are attended to and cared for in the ontologies of different cultures and religions, and what ethical relationships with other-than-human animals look like in the ontologies of different cultures and religions.

 

I completed my Ph.D. in Environmental Studies at York University, in Toronto, Canada, in May 2024. My Ph.D. research was supported by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. I also have a Master in Environmental Studies (MES) degree from York University, and an Honour's Bachelor of Science with Distinction from the University of Toronto, double majoring in Philosophy and Zoology.

 

In my graduate research, I brought Environmental Humanities—including Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics—into conversation with Indigenous Studies and Settler Colonial Studies, confronting how the prominence of anthropocentrism in dominant Western thought can influence settlers’ analyses of settler colonialism and create incongruities between Indigenous efforts towards dismantling settler colonialism and settler support for these actions.

 

My research has been published in Radical History Review and Ecology and Society. And I previously worked with UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies, including serving as a Managing Editor for several years.

 

I am a settler on Turtle Island. My maternal ancestors come from Italy, arriving on Turtle Island in the 1910s and 1920s; and my paternal ancestors come from Poland and the British Isles, arriving on Turtle Island, respectively, in the 1920s and—as far as I have been able to find—as early as the late 1700s, with that branch of my family living largely in Newfoundland for much of their time on Turtle Island.

 

I was born on the Nishnaabeg territory of Bawating or Baawitigong, the “place of the rapids,” known colonially as Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. Just before my third birthday, my family moved with me to the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory of Nogojiwanong, “the place at the foot of the rapids,” known colonially as Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, I moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada—a colonial name I have learned is derived from a Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk) or Wendat word. However, what is now called “Toronto” is not a singular place and, as territory of the Nishnaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat, the Land encompassed by “Toronto” has many names, only some of which I know.

I currently reside and work on the occupied Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation; the Traditional Territories of the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee, notably the Onödowá’ga:’ (Seneca); and the Lands of many Plant, Animal, and other More-than-Human Nations. I am committed to dismantling settler colonialism, and to supporting Indigenous sovereignty, rematriation, and caretaking of these and all Lands facing ongoing colonization.