Technoscience Research Unit

IN Workshop: Promotion and Tenure packages for community-based research July 16-17, 2025

Join us for a two-day workshop on preparing your promotion and tenure file for community-based research! July 16 & 17 2025, free, and probably a little bit fun.

Sponsored by CLEAR and the IndigeLab Network
www.indigelabnetwork.com/test-worksho...

Left to Right: M. Murphy and Kristen Bos.

#UofT’s Technoscience Research Unit announces $22M grant from New Frontiers in Research Fund for Indigenous and community-based approaches to pollution risk with partners across Canada and Aotearoa.

Read more: bit.ly/43Fwmrm

Look at this setup! 💐 We are thrilled to be in Kambri on Ngunnawal and Ngambri lands for the Global Indigenous Data Sovereignty Conference #GIDSov25 #Indigenousdata #IndigenousSTS

Wish you were here to celebrate! 🎉

TRU to Steward $22M New Frontier in Research Fund Transformation Grant — TECHNOSCIENCE RESEARCH UNIT Stewarded by the Technoscience Research Unit at the University of Toronto, this collaborative research initiative seeks to re-envision chemical risk management in a time of environmental crisis.

We are humbled to announce that we will be stewarding an incredible $22M from the #NFRF 2024 Transformation competition for Indigenous & community-based approaches to pollution risk with our partners across Canada & Aotearoa ✨

www.technoscienceresearchunit.org/tru-new-fron...

Joy for days! I was so happy and honored to give a lecture and workshop research in the @tru-uoft.bsky.social. Meeting and engaging with Dr. Murphy was as joyous as it was intellectually generative. Toronto owes me not a single thing. Thank you dearly for the invitation.

Our Technoscience Salon is back! Join us this Tuesday from 4-6PM for a lecture by Dr. Jayson Maurice Porter
(@roguechieftan.bsky.social) on arsenic, race and empire 🤓

www.eventbrite.ca/e/2025-techn...

Book Launch & Panel: A Woman Is a School Join us for the Toronto launch and book panel of A Woman is a School with Céline Semaan, founder of the Slow Factory.

We are beyond excited to be hosting the book launch + panel of ✨ A Woman Is A School ✨ with author & Slow Factory founder Céline Semaan in conversation with @smohyeddin.bsky.social from On The Line Media and Tai Salih from The Red Ma’at Collective on Feb 17th, 12-2PM 🌱

awomanisaschool.eventbrite.ca

Come over for lunch 🥗

Andrew Barry: The Geography of Chemicals Join us the 2025 Technoscience Salon for a public lecture with Dr. Andrew Barry, a leading scholar of chemical geographies.

Tomorrow from 4-6PM our #TechnoscienceSalon on “What is a chemical?” is back with Andrew Barry from @uclgeography.bsky.social who will be talking how the politics and #geography of #chemicals revolve around accumulation, scale, and sensing. Register below ⬇️

www.eventbrite.ca/e/andrew-bar...

Data Colonialism in Canada's Chemical Valley: Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the Failure of the Pollution Notification System This report is about the relationship between the petrochemical industry in Ontario’s Chemical Valley and Aamjiwnaang First Nation. Central to this relationship is pollution: the spills, flares, air r...

"Polluters on Indigenous territories must respect
Indigenous jurisdiction over their activities and
lands, including providing pollution data and
environmental information."

Read the report here: yellowheadinstitute.org/data-colonia...

"Over and over, Indigenous communities state
the need for access and control to better data
and information about industry disruptions to
land and life, but this call goes unanswered."

Concerningly, these companies also govern the Bluewater Association for Safety, Environment, and Sustainability (BASES), which is responsible for real-time air monitoring and emergency response in Chemical Valley—this is part of why we call it #DataColonialism.

Who is most responsible for these pollution events?

Just FIVE companies are responsible for 71% of pollution notifications: Shell Canada, Imperial Oil, Nova Chemicals, Suncor, Ineos Styrolution. These are the biggest companies in the area 🏭🏭🏭🏭🏭

Spring, a time of renewal and rebirth, when fish are spawning, animals are born, and plants are reawakening and budding, is the most dangerous time in Chemical Valley 🌱⚠️

The most commonly reported pollution event notification type is an airborne event 😷

Pollution Notification map — The Land and the Refinery

There have been 645 pollution notifications over the past ten years, which means that community members have received a notification about “unusual” pollution events every 5.65 days for a decade 🤯

Check out the notifications on this interactive map: www.landandrefinery.org/projects/pol...

This means that members of Aamjiwnaang First Nation have been collecting data for 20 years! Generations of community members have been living next to companies in Chemical Valley and are the experts of the effects.

This is #IndigenousEnvironmentalDataJustice

Here is some of what the data reveals:

Ada's Data — The Land and the Refinery

Collecting pollution notifications, Vanessa & Beze followed in the footsteps of activist & researcher Ada Lockridge, who logged notifications in her calendar from 2003-2013.

Check out Ada's data here: www.landandrefinery.org/projects/ada...

The data in this report was collected by EDJ Lab members Vanessa & Beze Gray between 2013-2023.

www.technoscienceresearchunit.org/environmenta...

Data Colonialism in Canada's Chemical Valley: Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the Failure of the Pollution Notification System This report is about the relationship between the petrochemical industry in Ontario’s Chemical Valley and Aamjiwnaang First Nation. Central to this relationship is pollution: the spills, flares, air r...

In 2023, we partnered with @yellowhead.bsky.social on this #DataColonialism report about how companies operate in Ontario’s Chemical Valley, where 40% of Canada’s petrochemicals are processed and which sits on the territory of Aamjiwnaang First Nation.

yellowheadinstitute.org/data-colonia...

We are excited to be here 🦋!

We are an Indigenous-led lab at @uoft.bsky.social where we do #environmentaldatajustice #Indigenousdatasovereignty #AI #Indigenousfeminisms #queer #anticolonial & #justice-based research ✊🏽🍉🐢