Fiona Polack

Fiona Polack is a Full Professor in the Department of English at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, where she conducts research at the intersection of energy humanities, environmental studies, and postcolonial theory. She serves as Academic Editor at Memorial University Press and leads the SSHRC Insight grant-funded project "Oil Rigs and Islands," which examines contemporary cultural figurations of place-making in offshore environments. Her work focuses on the cultural dimensions of offshore oil extraction, particularly in North Atlantic contexts, and she has established herself as a leading scholar in energy and environmental humanities with a specific focus on island and ocean studies.

Dr. Polack's research interests include:

• Energy and Environmental Humanities
• Island and Ocean Studies
• Settler Colonialism
• Newfoundland and Labrador Literary and Cultural Studies
• Australian Literature

Her scholarly work reveals a consistent focus on cultural representations of energy extraction in fragile marine environments, particularly examining how offshore oil industries are imagined and narrated in cultural texts. She has developed a distinctive comparative approach that juxtaposes Tasmania and Newfoundland as sites of settler colonialism with particular attention to Indigenous histories and contemporary issues. Her research demonstrates how cultural narratives shape public understanding of energy systems and environmental challenges, with emphasis on North Atlantic regions where offshore oil extraction has significant economic and ecological impacts.

Dr. Polack has received significant research funding, including an SSHRC Insight Grant for her project "Oil Rigs and Islands," which investigates cultural meanings of rigs and islands as conduits for human and nonhuman place-making in offshore environments. She has collaborated extensively with Dr. Danine Farquharson on petroculture-related projects, resulting in co-edited collections such as "Cold Water Oil: Offshore Petroleum Cultures" (Routledge, 2021). This work examines how societies conceive of fossil fuel extraction in North Atlantic and Arctic waters, arguing that "what happens offshore matters" given that over a quarter of the world's oil and gas is produced from beneath the seas.

Her notable publications include:

• Cold Water Oil: Offshore Petroleum Cultures (2021, co-edited with Danine Farquharson)
• Tracing Ochre: Changing Perspectives on the Beothuk (2018, edited)
• After Oil (2016, with the Petrocultures Research Group)

Dr. Polack regularly teaches undergraduate courses including English 2122: World Literature in English, English 3009: Literature and Environment, English 3160: Empire and After, English 3161: Australian Literature, and English 4891: Imagining Islands, and graduate courses including English 7087: Petrofictions and English 7003: Theory for Our Times. She supervises graduate students working in Energy and Environmental Humanities, Island Studies, Ocean Humanities, Post-Colonial Literatures, Settler Colonialism, and Newfoundland and Labrador Literatures and Cultures.