Susie O'Brien

Susie O'Brien is a Professor in the Department of English & Cultural Studies at McMaster University, specializing in decolonial, Indigenous, and settler-colonial literary studies, environmental humanities, and cultural critiques of globalization. She leads the SSHRC Insight Grant-funded project Racialized Ecologies in and Beyond Settler-Colonial Canada and collaborates with international collectives like RESHAP and Reckoning, Repairing and Reworlding Working Collective.

• Ph.D., Queen's University, 1995
• M.A., University of Queensland, 1991

Her research interrogates intersections between colonialism and environmental crises, focusing on decolonial resilience narratives in Canada, Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa, and the U.S. She advances anti-racist frameworks in environmental humanities and explores themes like critical food studies, extractivism, and gender-based violence in the global South.

Recent work (2024) includes co-authored journal entries on artistic praxis for planetary crisis and a monograph What the World Might Look Like analyzing decolonial storytelling. Earlier publications examine urban resilience narratives, temporal globalization, and privatization of resilience through postcolonial fiction and cultural theory.

Scientific Awards

• SSHRC Insight Grant (2024)

O'Brien serves on graduate committees across disciplines and teaches courses like Revolt and Remember: Resilience in the Postcolonial Environmental Humanities and Foundations in Cultural Studies. She contributes to debates on graduate student stress, climate justice, and fossil fuel divestment.