Nicole Van Lier

Broadly speaking, my research interests explore the economies and ecologies of settler colonialism and racial capitalism in North America with a focus on political struggles over natural resources and the ways settler-capitalist states organize and represent their relationships to nature. My doctoral research historicizes the mass water shutoffs imposed on Detroit residents between 2014-2020. To do so, I examine an under-explored relationship between uneven residential water access and the postwar consolidation of state capacities to regulate water pollution in the St. Clair-Detroit River water corridor. Drawing on archival records, my project charts how Detroit's water affordability crisis, and the recent water shutoffs, emerged out of the institutionalization of racially- and economically-uneven reproductive relations that have structured water quality management in southeast Michigan since the early 20th century.

My Masters thesis examined media representations of environmental activism challenging Enbridge's Line 9 pipeline in southwestern Ontario.