Joy Porter

Professor Porter co-founded the internationally collaborative Treatied Spaces Research Group, dedicated to interdisciplinary Indigenous environmental themes in relation to global challenges. She has produced award-winning new knowledge within four monographs and three other books, advancing thinking on Indigenous leadership, international diplomacy, environmentalism, and trauma; pioneered Soundscaping as an intercultural engagement tool, co-produced field-leading Indigenous artist exhibitions (American Museum, Bath; NONAM, Zurich), films, international conferences, and with King’s Digital lab, the first ‘kinetic’ Indigenous-oriented re-mapping of NE America.

She is PL for two AHRC standard research grant projects, ‘Historic Houses Global Crossroads’ (2024-27), exploring how historic houses and their environs can thrive in the future as inclusive global spaces adaptive to climate change; and ‘Brightening the Covenant Chain’ (2021-24), an international collaboration revealing globally significant cultures of diplomacy between the British Crown, the Haudenosaunee and their neighbours in North America. She is also PI Host 2024-25 for Leverhulme Visiting Professor and Canada Research Chair Damien Lee, developing plans to research ‘A First Indigenous History of Adoption’. Her research was nominated for the 2024 Canadian Pierre Savard Award and previously attracted the ‘Writer of the Year Award’, Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers, and ‘Outstanding Academic Title Award’, American Library Association.

Professor Porter was Co-Investigator of the Leverhulme Doctoral Centre for Water Cultures and PI Host for British Academy Global Professor Gregory Smithers (2021-24). Her work has benefitted from a Leverhulme Major Fellowship & Fellowship, AHRC Fellowship, British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, Fulbright All-Disciplines Visiting Scholar Award (Dartmouth, NH), British Association of Canadian Studies Award, Canadian Government Research Award. She has held Visiting Professorships at the University of Paris, Diderot and The Clinton Institute, Dublin.

Professor Porter serves on the UKRI Interdisciplinary Assessment College (Rover, 2023-25), interviews for Fulbright US-UK, and reviews for AHRC, NERC, RCUK Newton Fund and Academy of Finland. She was a REF2021 UoA28 (History) full panel member and Interdisciplinary Panel Member.

Before joining Birmingham, Professor Porter was Professor of Indigenous and Environmental History, University of Hull; Associate Dean, College of Arts & Humanities, Swansea University; and Senior Lecturer in American History, Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge.

She engages in knowledge exchange, impact and consultancy work across sectors, working with heritage sites to enhance interpretation and contextualization of Indigenous materials, with UK Exam Boards updating provision linked to the Indigenous world, and with governmental bodies globally advising on Intangible Cultural Heritage, Intellectual property and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Find out more at: https://treatiedspaces.com/knowledge-exchange-impact/

Professor Porter is an interdisciplinary researcher of Indigenous historical themes in relation to treaties, the environment, Intangible Cultural Heritage, resource politics, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence & Data Ethics. She is PI of the Treatied Spaces Research Group, which brings together educators, Indigenous groups, museums, creative artists, NGOs and policymakers to make treaties and environmental concerns central to education, policy, and public understanding. 

Professor Porter has a developed record of globally-disseminated outputs, including four monographs published by major US presses, and Trauma, Primitivism and the First World War: The Making of Frank Prewett (Pierre Savard Award 2024 Nominee, Bloomsbury, 2021). This first book-length analysis of Canada’s premier poet of combat-induced trauma revealed a figure whose indigenous identity was deeply significant within the Bloomsbury literary milieu. It argues that Prewett exemplified a ‘soft’ primitivism at the heart of modernity as an historical and social force.

Professor Porter’s forthcoming book is Canada's Green Challenge (contracted, McGill, 2025). It takes the reader beyond the solution-sets advanced by both left and right, confronting the reality of Canada as a mining economy, one of the world’s largest exporters of minerals and metals, selling over sixty different mineral commodities to over one hundred countries. The book argues it is unreasonable to look to Canada’s Indigenous peoples to solve the climate crisis, despite their vital, ongoing efforts to protect Canadian land. However, Indigenous respect for balance will be central to a Canadian sustainable future. 

Professor Porter is Project Lead for the 3-year AHRC Standard Research Grant, ‘Historic Houses, Global Crossroads: Revisioning Two Northern Ireland Historic Houses and Estates’ (2024-27, 1.49M), exploring how historic sites can beneficially position themselves in a new way, as global crossroads, entangled intersections of diplomatic, material and intercultural exchange where conceptualisation of the international took place. She is also Project Lead for the 3-year AHRC Standard Research Grant ‘Brightening the Covenant Chain: Revealing Cultures of Diplomacy Between the Iroquois and the British Crown’ (2021-24, 931k).

Alongside Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes), California State University and Dr Clint Carroll (Cherokee), University of Colorado, Professor Porter is Lead Editor of the Cambridge University Press book series, Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research, which investigates how environmental issues and processes relate to Indigenous socio-economic, cultural and political dynamics. 

Professor Porter has delivered keynotes and invited lectures across Europe and North America (Universities of Copenhagen, Geneva, Oxford, Cambridge, Westpoint, Yale, UCD, Harvard Law School and Virginia Commonwealth).

Sample of recorded events

‘Handling the Black Box,’ opening keynote of the 2023 AHRC International Conference, University of Oxford 18 September 2023.

‘Wildness and Indigenous American Futures,’ Annual Conference of Irish Association for American Studies, Dublin City University, 29 April 2022.

‘Indigenous Environmental History and Its Relevance to Future Prosperity,’ Institute for Global Prosperity, Director’s Seminar, UCL, 10 March 2022.

Academic Digital Outputs

1.‘Movement and Common Worlds’: Fully interactive, layered, immersive Digital Kinetic Map made using geo-rectified British Library historic maps, revealing a pre-Revolutionary Indigenous world not shown in post-1776 American mapping, co-produced with King’s Digital, King’s College London, final version available late 2024.

1. Mohawk Diplomatic Soundscapes, 2023.
2. Public-facing Zooniverse project: Mapscapes: Revealing Indigenous Placenames in the Northeast, at beta stage, launch Fall, 2024.

Research Impact

1. Consulting on 2023 AQA GCSE and OUP Textbook “American West, 1840-1895”.
2. 2023 International Symposium, Queens University, Ontario. ‘Connected Nations: Indigenous Rights and the Royal Proclamation of 1763’.
3. 2022 Museum Exhibition, American Museum & Gardens, Bath: 19 March -3 July 2022 “Dress to Redress: Exploring Native American Material Culture” featuring Material Kwe by AHRC Co-I Celeste Pedri-Spade (Anishinaabe).
4. 2022 International Workshop Plenary ‘Indigenous Cultural Diplomacy’, Queens University, Ontario.
5. 2022 Artist’s Residencies: American Museum & Gardens, Bath; NONAM, Zurich, Celeste Pedri-Spade (Anishinaabe).