Keith Williams, PhD

I grew up in rural Nova Scotia, on the south shore. My rural upbringing has played a significant role in influencing my thinking and my (also rural) adult life. I fell in love with theory during my Ph.D. and I try to bring my theoretical interests in conversation with my embodied and emplaced experience of the world. Although I do not identify as Indigenous, I have paternal ancestry from a Mohawk community on the northern shores of Lake Ontario and I deeply appreciate Haudenosaunee culture and values. I have lived and worked in different parts of the world and my life has been enriched by learning about how other people live and what they value. I am currently working with good friends and colleagues in Peru on projects related to the Indigenous philosophy, sacred plant medicines, and the lively agency of our non-human cousins.

My primary research interest is an attempt to respond to this crisis of connection by asking, and trying to answer, the question: how can we be better relatives to each other and to our more-than-human (MTH) relatives? My interdisciplinary research program approaches this broad question via several complementary and overlapping lines of research, including 1). the role of adult and higher education in transforming rural life for humans and the MTH; 2). psychedelics and the crisis of connection; 3). technology and our relationships with self and other; 4). interspecies communication as an approach to informing the Rights of Nature movement. In addition to my overarching research question, posthuman philosophy, Indigenous thought, critical theory, and poststructuralism all unite the strands of my research as does my own lived experience in the world and the perspectives that I bring to bear on my various areas of focus.