Heather Dorries

Assistant Professor
Sidney Smith Hall, Room 5016C
416-946-8260

Campus

Cross-Appointments

Centre for Indigenous Studies

Fields of Study

Areas of Interest

Settler Colonialism, Racial Capitalism, Indigenous Planning and Urbanism

Biography

Heather Dorries is an Assistant Professor jointly appointed to the Department of Geography and Planning and Centre for Indigenous Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the dynamic interplay between resurgent Indigenous world-making and the violence of settler colonial urbanization. Specifically, it examines how settler colonialism, as a mode of racial capitalism, is supported by planning processes. It also also considers how Indigenous intellectual traditions—including Indigenous environmental knowledge, legal orders, and cultural production—can be applied to anti-colonial planning practices and develops the theoretical and methodological frameworks this transformation requires. Graduate Teaching: JPG 1835H Anti-Colonial Planning Undergraduate Teaching: JIG 322 Indigenous Worlds, Worldviews, and the Environment INS 390 Research and Ethics in Indigenous Studies.

Publications

Dorries, H. (Forthcoming) Planning Without Property? Relational Practices of Being and Belonging. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

Dorries, H., & Harjo, L. (2020). Beyond Safety: Refusing Colonial Violence Through Indigenous Feminist Planning. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 40(2), 210-219.

Dorries, H., Hugill, D. and J. Tomiak. (2019) Racial Capitalism and the Settler Colonial Relation: Notes from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Geoforum. On-line ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.07.016

Education

PhD, University of Toronto MScPl, University of Toronto BA, McGill University