RESEARCH

I collaborate with Indigenous peoples, rural farmers, and their descendants to trace how ancient urbanism, imperialism, and settler colonialism in the Americas is intertwined with our genomes and the ecologies we live in. Working from a knowledge of the conjoined histories of science and colonialism, my work takes on the genome lab as a site of critical reinvention to ask different questions and shift the existing landscapes of scientific knowledge production and data governance in genome science.

Rick W. A. Smith loading a Nanopore MinION during SING Canada 2022. Photo by Esta Bee.

Rick W. A. Smith performing at Sexy Science Confessions, Global Indigenous Leadership in Genomics Symposium 2024, Vancouver, B.C. Photo by Veronica Bonderud.

 
 

ABOUT MY LAB GROUP AND OUR WORK

 

Critical Molecular Anthropology Lab (CMAL)

Genetic landscapes of early urbanism, ancient Imperialism, and colonialism

Molecular ecologies of the plantation