CV

Elizabeth R. Johnson

elizabethrjohnson9@gmail.com  |  elizabethrjohnson.org | geocritique.org | @erandolphj


Education

Ph.D., Geography, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, August 2011

M.A., Geography, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, March 2007.

B.A., Geography from the Environmental School, Clark University, Worcester, MA, June 2001. Cum Laude, High Honors in Geography

Professional Experience

Assistant Professor of Human Geography, Department of Geography
Durham University, UK, 2017-Present.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities, Environmental Studies Program
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, 2015-2017

Research Fellow, College of Life & Environmental Sciences
Science, Technology, and Culture Research Cluster & Department of Geography
University of Exeter, UK, 2013-2015.

A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, under the theme of “Life”
Center for the Humanities & Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2011-2013

Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant, Department of Geography
University of Minnesota, 2004-2007,  2008-2009

United States Peace Corp Environmental Education Volunteer, Chongqing
Institute of Technology, Chongqing, China, 2001-2003

Publications

REFEREED PUBLICATIONS

Johnson, E. 2017. “At the Limits of Species Being: Sensing the Anthropocene,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 116 (2).

Johnson, E and A. Schrader. “Unsettling Life, Death, and Killability: an interdisciplinary discussion” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, forthcoming.

Johnson, E. “Reconsidering Mimesis: Freedom and Acquiescence in the Anthropocene,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(2).

Johnson, E. Unsettling Life in the Law: Living with and as Jellyfish.” In Irus Braverman, ed., Animals, Biopolitics, Law: Lively Legalities, London: Routledge.

Johnson, E. 2015. “Of Lobsters, Laboratories, and War: Animal Studies and Spaces of Encounter” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33 (2).

Johnson, E. and J. Goldstein. “Biomimetic Future: Enclosing a more-than-human intellect,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105 (2).

Goldstein, J. and Johnson, E. 2015. “Biomimicry: New Natures for and Against Capital,” Theory, Culture, Society, 32 (1). 

Johnson, E. and H. Morehouse. 2014. “Introduction: Toward a Politics for the Anthropocene,” a forum special issue on the Politics of the Anthropocene, E. Johnson and H. Morehouse, eds., Progress In Human Geography,  38 (3): 439-441.

Johnson, E. 2010. “Reinventing Biological Life, Reinventing ‘The Human,’” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 10(3): 180.

Meyerhoff, E., E. Johnson, and B. Braun. 2011. “Time and the University,” Acme: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 10 (3): 483-507.

BOOK REVIEWS

Meyerhoff, E. and E. Johnson. 2009. “Charting the Terrain of Struggle in the Global University,” book review of The Edu-factory Collective, eds. (2009) Toward a Global Autonomous University. Cognitive Labor, The Production of Knowledge, and Exodus from the Education Factory, New York: Autonomedia, in Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 9(4).

NON-ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS 

Contributing editor, Rare Earth Catalogue: Reckoning with the Anthropocene, Brooklyn, NY: Occuprint.

Johnson, E. “Frederic Neyrat: The Political Unconscious of the Anthropocene, an Interview with Elizabeth R. Johnson,” Society and Space Blog, http://societyandspace.com/material/interviews/neyrat-by-johnson/.

Johnson, Elizabeth, Jessi Lehman, Harlan Morehouse, and Sara Nelson. 2013. “400ppm: Critical Climate Change Scholarship,” part of the Society and Space blog forum, “400ppm: Exit Holocene, Enter Anthropocene,” http://societyandspace.com/material/elizabeth-johnson-jessi-lehman-harlan-morehouse-sara-nelson-400ppm-critical-climate-change-scholarship/

Fellowships, Honors, & Awards

Fisher Center Faculty Fellow, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, on the theme of “Gender, Climate Change, and the Anthropocene” 2015

Humanities and Social Science Strategy Development Grant, University of Exeter, for “Unsettling Life/Death in Technoscientific Practices with Marine Invertebrates”, with Astrid Schrader, 2014

Human-Animal Studies Fellowship, Animal-Society Institute, Wesleyan University, Summer 2011

Participant, Macaulay Honors College Faculty Seminar, “From Bestiary to Bioculture: Constituting the Human,” 2010-2011

Mark and Judy Yudof Fellowship in Science Policy and Ethics, University of Minnesota, 2009-2010

Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment, and the Life Sciences Fellowship, University of Minnesota, 2009

Participant, Center for Place, Culture, and Politics Annual Seminar, “Geopolitics and Insecurity,” The Graduate Center CUNY, 2007-2008

Presidential Fellowship, The Graduate Center CUNY; 2007-2012, declined 2009-2012

Graduate Research Partnership Program (with Professor Arun Saldanha), Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, 2007

Foreign Language Area Scholarship (Mandarin Chinese), U.S. Department of Education in association with University of Minnesota, 2006-2007

Red Pocket and Hsiao Scholarships, China Center, University of Minnesota, 2005

Honorable Mention, Geography, National Science Foundation – Graduate Research Fellowship Program, 2005

Invited Lectures

2015. “Re-placing Labor in the Engineered Ecologies of the Anthropocene,” Engineered Worlds, a workshop at The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, University of Chicago, October 1-3.

2015. “Biomimetic science and the politics of fabricating ‘pluripotent’ life,” Domestication and Fabrication of life, Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale Pépinière Interdisciplinaire CNRS-PSL, College de France, March 24.

2015. “Cartographies of the Anthropocene: Reconsidering the bio/geo divide,” Life After the Anthropocene, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, Oxford University, February 25.

2014. “Between Apocalypse and Eternity: Legislating the Life Cycles of Jellyfish” More-than-Human Legalities: Advocating an Animal Turn in Law, SUNY Buffalo Law School, September 11-12.

2014. “Engineering Bees: Reconsidering Human and Nonhuman Labor,” Department of Geography, University of Washington, April 25.

2014. “Unsettling Life/Death: Living with and as Jellyfish,” Biological Futures in a Globalized World, Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, April 24.

 2013. “Reproducing Bees: Value and Bricolage in Biomimetic Practice,” Insects and Biotechnologies Workshop, Institute for Science Innovation and Society, University of Oxford, December 11.

2011. “On Friendship and Revolutionary Time,” So-Called Marginalia event, Bluestockings Bookstore, New York City, June 10.

Campus Talks 

2014. “Time and the University,” University College London–Exeter Workshop on Science and Technology Studies, University of Exeter, February 21.

 2014. “For the Love of Jellyfish,” University of Exeter, Department of Geography Seminar, February 5.

 2013. “Mimetic Revolutions in the Biopolitical Machine,” Biopolitics: Life in the Past and Present, Center for the Humanities, UW – Madison, May 3-4.

 2013. “The Promise of a New Humanity: Imagining Bio-Mimetic Futures,” Friday Lunch Lecture Series, Center for the Humanities, UW – Madison, March 1.

 2012. “Life, Limits, and Enclosure: The Production of Biomimetic Science,” Yi-Fu Tuan Lecture Series, Department of Geography, UW – Madison, November 16.

 2011. “The Purpose of RoboBees: Biomimicry and Value,” Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, UW-Madison, November 17.

2007. “Revealing the West as a Land of Gold? The problem of tourism development and biodiversity conservation in Western Sichuan, China,” Asian Literatures, Cultures, and Media Workshop, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, March 22.

Conference Activity

PAPER PRESENTATIONS

2016  “Bioaccumulation in the Anthropocene and the Limits of Labor,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, San Francisco, March 29-April 4.

2015  “The Imperceptibility of Jellyfish: Unknowability in the Anthropocene,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Chicago, IL April 21-25.

2014   “Thinking Im/mortality with Jellyfish,” Im/mortality and In/finitude Symposium, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden, December 2-5.

2014   “Deciding on the Uncompanionable: On Killing Bedbugs,” British Animal Studies Network Annual Conference, University of Exeter, November 14-15.

2014    “Intimacy and Finitude: Living with and As Jellyfish,” Annual Conference of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Turin, Italy, June 3-6.

2014    “Beyond Productions of Ignorance: Agnotologies of the Anthropocene,” Anthropocene Feminisms Conference, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, April 10-12.

2013    “Biomimicries For and Against Capitalism,” with Jesse Goldstein, Critical Climate Change Workshop, University of Minnesota and Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Los Angeles, CA, April 2013.

2012    “Revisiting more-than-human Encounters: The ethics and politics of living and
dying lobsters,” Annual Conference on Critical Geography, Chapel Hill, NC, November 2012.

2012    “The Political Promise of Ontology,” Millennium Conference: Materialism and World Politics, London, UK, with Garnet Kindervater, October 2012.

2012    “Littoral Bodies: Beyond the Boundaries of Geopolitical Territory” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, New York, NY, March 2012.

2011    “Reproducing Bees? Bricolage and the Value of Biomimicry” Human-Animal Studies Conference, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, July 2011.

2011    “For the Love of Jellyfish: Reflections on Labor, Affect, and Biological Politics” Constituting the Human, Macaulay Honors College, CUNY, New York, NY, April 2011.

2010    “Politicizing the Banality of RoboBees, or: Musing on Technoscience and the Quotidian,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Seattle, WA, April 2010.

2010    “Reverse Engineering Evolution: Considering jellyfish, oilfields, and other stories of the material present” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Washington, D.C, April 2010.

2009    “Bio-Machinic Innovation: Of technological materials, imagined futures and contemporary conflict” Annual Meeting of the Association of American Anthropologists, Philadelphia, PA, November 2009.

2008    “Consider the Lobster: From environmentalism to militarism” The State of Things Conference, University of Leicester, UK, May 2008.

2008    “Geopolitics, Bio-Revolutions, and the Emerging Science of Defense” Annual Meeting of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers, London, UK, August 2008.

2007    “Engineering (In)Secure Bodies:  Biological productions of national defense” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Boston, MA, April 2007.

2007    “Combat Zoology: Engineering insecurity and the nation-state” Project Biocultures: Science, Technology, Culture, Humanity, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, November 2007.

2007    “Is Domestic Tourism a Domestic Phenomenon?  Development, the state, and global connections in the mountains of Western Sichuan, China” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, San Francisco, CA, April 2007.

PANEL PRESENTATIONS

2015   Queer Data: Desire and Tension in the Production of Media Ecologies, Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Chicago, IL, April 21-25.

2010   The Ontology of Revolution: Negri and Geography (Re)considered, Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Washington, DC, April 14-18.

2009   Geopolitics and Insecurity, Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Las Vegas, NV, March 22-27.

2008   Susan Hanson’s 45 years in geography: Feminist ideas change the world, Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Boston, MA, April 15-19.

Teaching Experience

Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Environmental Studies Program
Topics in Environmental Studies: Global Climate Change (Fall 2015, 2016; Spring 2016)
Eating, Killing, Loving: Our Lives with Animals (Spring 2016)
Human Values and the Environment (Fall 2015, 2016; Spring 2016)
Radical Environmentalisms (Fall 2016)
Senior Integrated Experience: Local Animal Agriculture (Fall 2015)

University of Exeter, Department of Geography
Geographies of Science, Politics and Publics (Spring 2015), co-taught with Gail Davies
Geographies of Life (Fall 2014), co-taught with the Nature, Materialities, and Biopolitics Research Group

University of Wisconsin – Madison, Department of Geography
Introduction to People and Resources (Spring 2012, 2013)
Special Topics Seminar: Emergent Geographies of Techno-Biological Change (Fall 2011, 2012)

LaGuardia Community College, Department of Social Sciences
Introduction to World Geography: America in the World (Fall 2010, Spring 2011)

University of Minnesota, Department of Geography
Political Ecology of North America (Summer 2010)

 

Service

Academic Service

2014  Discussant, “Ignorance and Intervention,” Knowledge/Value Workshop: Dark Data, University of Exeter, December 15-16.

2014  Paper Session Co-Organizer with Astrid Schrader, “Unsettling Life and Death” Annual Conference of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Turin, Italy, June 3-6.

2014  Paper Session Co-Organizer with Harlan Morehouse and Rory Rowan, “Geophilosophy and the Geo-Social,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Tampa, FL, April 19-25.

2013  Paper Session Co-Organizer with Harlan Morehouse, “Revisiting the Anthropocene, Rethinking Anthropos,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Los Angeles, CA, April 9-13.

2013  Panel Session Co-Organizer with Katharine Kindervater, “Michel Serres and Geography,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Los Angeles, CA, April 9-13.

2013  Discussant, “Animating Geopolitics,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Los Angeles, CA, April 9-13.

2012  Paper Session Co-Organizer with Garnet Kindervater, “The Political Promises of Ontology,” Millennium Conference: Materialism and World Politics, London School of Economics, UK, October 19-20.

2012  Discussant, “Theorizing the Geographies of Food: New Directions and Interventions for Alternative Food Praxis,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, New York, NY, February 24-28.

2010  Panel Co-Organizer with Nathan Clough, “The Ontology of Revolution: Negri and Geography (Re)considered,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., April 14-18.

2009  Panel Organizer, “Geopolitics and Insecurity,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV, March 22-27.

2008  Paper Session Co-organizer with Bruce Braun, “Experimentation and Engineering: Between the Aleatory and the Processual,” Association of American Geographers, Boston, MA, April 15-19.

University Service

2013   Workshop Co-Organizer with Stephen Hinchliffe and Astrid Schrader, “Science Culture Futures,” a symposium at the University of Exeter, December.

2010   Conference Co-Organizer, “Beneath the University, the Commons,” University of Minnesota and the West Bank Social Center, April 8-11.

2009   Conference Co-Organizer, “Re-Working the University: Visions, Strategies, Demands,” University of Minnesota, April 24-26.

2008-2011  Graduate Student Workers United, Founding Member, UMN

Departmental Service

University of Exeter, Department of Geography

Nature, Materialities and Biopolitics (NAMBIO) Research Group, Member, 2013-present

University of Wisconsin – Madison, Department of Geography

Women in Geography, Member, 2011-2013

City University of New York – Graduate Center, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Spacetime Research Collective, Founding Member, 2008-present

University of Minnesota – Department of Geography

Working Group for Global Political Scholarship, Member, 2006-2009

Supporting Women in Geography, Member, 2004-2011

Coffee Hour Committee (coordinating committee for weekly speaker series), 2004-2009

Journal Peer Review

Cultural Geography 2016
Theory, Culture, Society 2016
Science, Technology, and Human Values, 2015
Geographical Research, 2015
Area, 2014
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2014, 2011
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2014
Geoforum, 2013
Social Studies of Science, 2013
Angelaki, 2012

Popular Media

2013   Stack-Whitney, K. “Ground Squirrels, the DoD, and the Death of Public Science: An Interview with Dr. Elizabeth Johnson,” Perpetual Notion Machine, WORT 89.9 FM, Madison, WI. Aired August 15, 2013.

2013   Beecham, Gwendolyn. 2013. “The Academic Feminist: Putting an Economic Value on Life – A Conversation with Elizabeth Johnson,” Feministing Online, January 17, http://feministing.com/2013/01/17/the-academic-feminist-putting-an-economic-value-on-life-a-conversation-with-elizabeth-johnson/

Professional Associations

Member, European Society for Literature, Science and Arts (SLSA – EU)
Member, Association of American Geographers
Member, American Anthropological Association
Member, Political Geography Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers
Member, Cultural Ecology Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers
Member, Royal Geographic Society with Institute for British Geographers