Rebeccah Nelems, PhD, MA, BA (Hon.)

A public sociologist and engaged social change theorist, my research engages with the inherent relationality of existence, centering Indigenous theory and relational ontologies. If a crisis of disconnect - from ourselves, others and earth – is core to the many eco-social challenges we face, my work focuses on how to transform individualist ways of being towards interconnected, eco-centric ways of being. Relational and collaborative changemaking has been a focus of my work as a scholar and practitioner for over twenty years, having led community-based research with dozens of organizations, institutions and movements – from small NGOs to UN agencies. With current research on eco-social empathy, decolonizing leadership, the youth climate justice movement and collaborative co-parenting, my recent publications address ontological diversity, engaged theory, climate change, and decolonizing higher education. I am a sixth-generation uninvited guest of Irish/Scottish/British descent on the ancestral lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking peoples today also known as Victoria, BC.

My work focuses on how we might work collaboratively, and across deep diversity, to transform individualist, ego-centric ways of being towards relational, eco-centric ways of being. My research interests fall into the following broad categories: - Applied, community-based, engaged research, with a focus on: youth climate justice movement; collaborative leadership and change-making; conceptions of home; collaborative co-parenting; decolonizing human rights; and the rights of nature. - Methodological interests include: community-based research; decolonizing research methodologies and methods; arts-based methods; engaged or grounded normative theory; relational and phenomenological methods. - Theoretical interests include: epistemic justice; decolonizing knowledge; social imaginaries; ontological diversity; eco-social empathy; Indigenous theory; phenomenology; deep ecology; and transformative social change theory.