Myra Hird

Myra Hird is a Full Professor in the School of Environmental Studies at Queen’s University, Canada, and holds a D.Phil. from Oxford University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2014) and recipient of the Queen’s Excellence in Research Prize (2015). Her research focuses on waste studies, environmental policy, and postcolonialism, with a particular emphasis on Canada’s waste crisis and its colonial underpinnings. She has secured over $13 million in research funding, including SSHRC and NSERC grants.

Education: D.Phil. (Sociology, Oxford, 1996); M.S.W. (McGill, 1992); B.S.W. (University of Windsor, 1990); B.A. (University of Western Ontario, 1985).

Research interests include waste management, environmental engineering, Indigenous studies, and postcolonial systems. Her work bridges science studies and sociology, addressing issues like settler colonialism’s impact on waste policies and Arctic development. Notable publications include Canada’s Waste Flows (2021) and Extracting Reconciliation (2023).

Awards include the Paul Harris Fellowship (2022) and SSHRC grants for projects like ‘Citizen Science Solutions to Canadian Waste Management Issues’. She has held visiting professorships at École Normale Supérieure (France), Linköping University (Sweden), and Lancaster University (UK).

Labs/Teams: Director of the Waste Flows research project and affiliated with the Queen’s National Scholar program. Collaborates internationally on projects like the Seed Box Environmental Humanities Collaboratory.