Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Fields of Study
- Policy & Planning
- Social & Political Geography
- Urban
Areas of Interest
Circulation & infrastructure, race & space, sexuality & social ordering, imperialism & urban life.
Biography
My work explores how the spaces of everyday life are assembled, reproduced, contested, and transformed. I focus on questions of circulation and infrastructure, attending to the co-production of race and space, sexuality and social ordering, and the intimate life of war in ostensibly civilian spaces. I am deeply fortunate to work with award-winning artists and filmmakers, Indigenous knowledge keepers, community organizers, labour movements, as well as extraordinary interdisciplinary and emerging scholars. My current research, entitled, Spineless: Infrastructure for the Apocalypse, explores the key role of socio-technical systems in the colonization of North America, and unearths alternative visions and forms of infrastructure to reorient us on a path to survival, justice and flourishing.
Publications
LaDuke, Winona & Deborah Cowen (2020) “Beyond Wiindigo Infrastructure.” South Atlantic Quarterly. 119(2): 243-269. https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article/119/2/243/1...
Cowen, Deborah (2020) “Following the Infrastructures of Empire: Notes on Cities, Settler Colonialism, and Method.” Urban Geography. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02723638.2019.1677990
Cowen, Deborah (2014) The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade. University of Minnesota Press. 2016 International Political Sociology Book Award, International Studies Association.