Vanessa Agard-Jones

Vanessa Agard-Jones is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. Her research focuses on the materiality of colonialism through the lens of toxicity, environment, race, gender, and sexuality in the Atlantic world. She holds a PhD from NYU and teaches courses on Caribbean studies and Black feminisms.

• Research projects include Body Burdens: Toxic Endurance and Decolonial Desire (Martinique's chemical contamination), The Synthetic Atlantic (pesticide commodity chains), and Mapping Toxic Entanglements (digital oral history project).
• Interdisciplinary affiliations: Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality; AAADS; Center for Science and Society.
• Community activism includes work with the Audre Lorde Project and Hudson Valley Seed's food justice initiatives.

Her work bridges ethnography and history to interrogate how coloniality manifests through environmental crises, racialized bodies, and political sovereignty. Current projects explore remediation strategies for toxic legacies and Black queer approaches to repair.