Skip to main content
Professor Joy Porter

Professor Joy Porter

Professor of Indigenous and Environmental History

Faculty and Department

  • Faculty of Arts Cultures and Education
  • School of Humanities

Qualifications

  • MA (University of Nottingham)
  • PhD / DPhil (University of Nottingham)

Summary

Professor Porter is Principal Investigator of the Treatied Spaces Research Group ( https://treatiedspaces.com/about-us/). She is an interdisciplinary researcher of Indigenous historical themes in relation to the environment, resource politics, and treaties. Her current role is research-led. From September 2019-March 2023 she is a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow working on a new book on the environmental record of President Nixon and the Republican Party. She is PI of the 3-year AHRC Standard Research Grant, "Brightening the Covenant Chain: Revealing Cultures of Diplomacy between the Crown and the Iroquois Confederacy" (931.032k, 2021-2024)".

She is PI Host for British Academy Global Professor Gregory Smithers, 2020-2024, working on "Native Ecologies: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Climate Change". See the project digital output produced with the University of Sheffield here: https://www.dhi.ac.uk/projects/cherokee-riverkeepers/ and here: https://www.cherokeeriverkeepers.org/. Professor Porter also convenes the “Living With/Out Water” cluster within the Leverhulme Doctoral Centre for Water Cultures.

Professor Porter serves on the AHRC Strategic Review College, 2016-2024, reviews and interviews for the Fulbright Commission, and reviews for the Leverhulme Trust, NERC, Finnish Research Council and Higher Education Academy. She is External Examiner for BA History, University of Bristol, 2021-2024 and for the University of Bristol's Sustainability Summer School. She served as UK REF 2021-2022 full Panel Member (History) and was a sub-panel Interdisciplinary Advisor across all three stages of the REF process.

Her research monographs include:

1. Canada's Green Challenge (Queen's-McGill University Press, forthcoming 2023).

2. Trauma, Primitivism and the First World War: The Making of Frank Prewett (Bloomsbury Press), 6 May 2021.

3. Native American Environmentalism (University of Nebraska Press, 2014, pbk 2018),

4. Native American Indian Freemasonry: Associationalism & Performance in America, (University of Nebraska Press, 2011, pbk 2019)

5. To Be Indian: The Life of Seneca-Iroquois Arthur Caswell Parker, University of Oklahoma Press, 2001).

Professor Porter received the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers

Writer of the Year Award for The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature, Cambridge University Press in 2006 and the American Library Association’s Choice Magazine's Outstanding Academic Title Award for To Be Indian: The Life of Iroquois-Seneca Arthur Caswell Parker, Foreword W. N. Fenton, The University of Oklahoma Press in 2002.

Professor Porter collaborates with Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes), California State University and Dr Clint Carroll (Cherokee), University of Colorado as a Lead Editor of the Cambridge University Press book series, Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research. To contribute to this series see here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/elements/elements-in-indigenous-environmental-research

Professor Porter's work has benefited from awards from the Fulbright Commission (All-Disciplines Scholar Award, Dartmouth, 2016), British Academy, AHRC, Canadian Government and Leverhulme Trust.

She will attend the 14 April 2023 symposium at Harvard Law School on 'Stewardship, Communitarianism and (Intellectual) Property: The Philosophical Foundations of Traditional Knowledge Protection" hosted by Professor Ruth Okediji, Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. She delivered the Plenary address at the Irish Association for American Studies Annual Conference on 29 April 2022 hosted by Dublin City University ( https://iaas.ie/iaas-annual-conference-2022/) and a UCL Institute for Global Prosperity Director's Seminar entitled "Indigenous Environmental History and the Future of Prosperity" on 10 March 2022 (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/igp/events/2022/mar/indigenous-environmental-history-and-its-relevance-future-prosperity). Other recent keynotes include the 2021 Mayflower Lecture “Indigenous Food Sovereignty: The Political Ecological Legacies of the Mayflower Sailing", University of Plymouth; 2019 Swiss Association for North American Studies Keynote, "Decolonising Water"; and the 2019 Eccles British Association of Canadian Studies BACS Keynote "Who Fights for Canada as the Climate Changes?"; and 2019 Alymer Lecture, University of York.

Professor Porter gained her PhD (1994) and MA (1992) from the University of Nottingham . She was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship Award by AdvanceHE in 2018 and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She supervises a range of doctoral candidates working on Indigenous Environmental History; US & Canadian Environmental Studies; Heritage Decolonisation & Indigenous Data Curation.

Professor Porter also undertakes a range of KE work on decolonisation, working with business schools, textbook publishers and exam boards. She is extending these KE activities and will be managing a KE Fellow in 2023 to further developing Treatied Spaces' research impact work Indigenising the UK Curriculum.

Professor Porter contributes regularly to the media. She has appeared on BBC TV News, BBC Radio, BBC Radio Bristol, and writes for the TLS, History Today, BBC Magazine, The Conversation and The Spectator. For more, please see https://treatiedspaces.com/knowledge-exchange/

Professor Porter is Lead Academic Supervisor for two Collaborative Doctoral Awards, one is a collaboration with English Heritage, the other a collaboration with the British Library. She also convenes the Living With/Out Water Strand within the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Centre for Water Cultures and supervises one of its doctoral candidates. She will supervise a further Water Cultures fully-funded doctoral scholarship on Flood Narratives in 2024- the advert for which will go live in Fall 2023.

Professor Porter's Teaching Awards include:

2018 National Teaching Fellow

2018 'Best Module' Student-Led Teaching Nomination

2017 'Best Module' Student-Led Teaching Award for 'Into the Wild: American Environmentalism in Context

2014 Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Professor Porter has an established record as a mentor for ECRs. She is an Ambassador (Interviewer and Reviewer) for the Fulbright US/UK Commission, and a member of the British Association for American Studies.

She is on research leave from Sept. 2019-Sept. 2024.

Recent outputs

View more outputs

Digital Artefact

Director's Seminar: Indigenous Environmental History and Its Relevance to Future Prosperity

Porter, J. (2022). Director's Seminar: Indigenous Environmental History and Its Relevance to Future Prosperity

Journal Article

The Dangerous Myth-making in The Banshees of Inisherin

Porter, J. (2023). The Dangerous Myth-making in The Banshees of Inisherin. The Spectator,

Chief Thunderwater: An Unexpected Indian in Unexpected Places. by Gerald F. Reid

Porter, J. (2023). Chief Thunderwater: An Unexpected Indian in Unexpected Places. by Gerald F. Reid. Western Historical Quarterly, Article whad027. https://doi.org/10.1093/whq/whad027

Other

Powerful Inversion

Porter, J. (2023). Powerful Inversion

Fear and Weakness

Porter, J. (2023). Fear and Weakness

Research interests

Resource Politics and Indigenous Environmental History, Cultures & Literatures; the American Presidency & the Environment; Modernity & War; US & Canadian Environmental Studies; Digital Humanities, Indigenous Data Curation.

Lead investigator

Project

Funder

Grant

Started

Status

Project

Arts and Humanities Research Council Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with the British Library

Funder

AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

Grant

£75,000.00

Started

1 October 2019

Status

Ongoing

Project

BA Global Professorship - Professor Gregory Smithers (Virginia Commonwealth University )

Funder

British Academy

Grant

£667,149.00

Started

27 January 2020

Status

Ongoing

Project

Mahogany, Enslaved Africans, Miskito Indigenous People at Chiswick House, Kenwood and Marble Hill, North London

Funder

AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

Grant

£87,309.00

Started

1 September 2021

Status

Ongoing

Project

HIKE: Impact Accelerati on for AHRC STG “Brightening the Covenant Chain”: Gathering Impact Evaluation Materials on a Museum Exhibiti on, Artist’s Residency and Schools Outr

Funder

AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

Grant

£2,000.00

Started

1 November 2022

Status

Ongoing

Project

Brightening the Covenant Chain: Revealing Cultures of Diplomacy Between the Crown and the Iroquois

Funder

AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

Grant

£684,621.00

Started

1 April 2021

Status

Ongoing

Project

British Academy Visiting Fellowships - Professor Dale Turner

Funder

British Academy

Grant

£25,554.00

Started

1 August 2018

Status

Complete

Project

What Would Nixon Do?:The Forgotten Republican Roots of American Environmentalism’

Funder

The Leverhulme Trust

Grant

£179,608.00

Started

1 September 2019

Status

Complete

Co-investigator

Project

Funder

Grant

Started

Status

Project

The University of Hull Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Centre on Water Cultures

Funder

The Leverhulme Trust

Grant

£1,350,000.00

Started

1 June 2021

Status

Ongoing

Project

White Rose Social Sciences Doctoral Training Partnership

Funder

ESRC Economic & Social Research Council

Grant

£83,649.00

Started

1 October 2017

Status

Complete

Postgraduate supervision

Joy Porter welcomes enquiries on all aspects of Indigenous Environmental History, Culture & Literature; the American Presidency & the Environment; Modernity & War; US & Canadian Environmental Studies; Digital Humanities, Indigenous Data Curation.

Recently completed PhD supervisions:

22.1.2021, Heather Hatton, 'The Languages and Spaces of Diplomacy in Early America, 1701 - 1774'. Examiner: Prof. Tim Shannon, Gettysburg College

2020 Juli Schlag, Trees in Indigenous America in Historical and Biological Context. Supervisors: Professor Joy Porter, Professor Roland Ennos.

2019, Edward Mair, Native American Slaveholding and Biracial Alliance Amongst Native American Indian and African Americans 1500-Present. Supervisors: Professor Joy Porter, Professor John Oldfield.

2017, Susannah Hopson, The Process of Memory: A Comparative Study of Native American Massacre Sites, 1863-1864. Examiner, Dr Laura Peers, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University.

Current Supervisions:

1. Rebecca Slatcher, AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, ‘North American Indigenous Languages in the British Library’s Post-1850 Collections'. Supervisors: Professor Joy Porter & Dr Fran Fuentes, North American Collections; Dr Nora McGregor, Digital Curation, British Library.

2. Hannah Cusworth, AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, "Enslaved Labour, Mahogany and Miskito Indigenous Peoples at Three English Heritage Sites", Supervisors: Prof. Joy Porter & Esme Whittaker, Curator, English Heritage/Historic England.

3. Phoebe Medlicott-Revell, "Water Cultures in Conflict at Pebble Mine, Bristol Bay, Alaska", Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Centre for Water Cultures

Awards and prizes

PI-AHRC Research Grant, Brightening the Covenant Chain: Revealing Cultures of Diplomacy Between the Crown and the Iroquois Confederacy (£931K)

2021 - 2024

Treatied Spaces has been awarded a Standard Research Grant valued at £931,042 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom for the project ‘Brightening the Covenant Chain: Revealing Cultures of Diplomacy Between the Crown and the Iroquois Confederacy’. This interdisciplinary project investigates the deep but unexplored connections embodied in these names, between the British Crown and the indigenous peoples of Canada and Northeastern America – one of the oldest diplomatic relationships in the world. It shaped the North America we know today and continues to be ‘brightened’ and renewed by the Royal family because of its vital role in addressing global challenges linked to the legal, environmental and territorial resurgence of indigenous rights.

PI AHRC/English Heritage/Historic England CDA ‘Mahogany, Enslaved Africans, and Miskito Indigenous Peoples at Chiswick House, Kenwood and Marble Hill, London’ (87k)

2021 - 2024

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award in partnership with English Heritage and Historic England ‘Mahogany, Enslaved Africans, and Miskito Indigenous Peoples at Chiswick House, Kenwood and Marble Hill, London’.

PI Host British Academy Global Professor (800k)

2019 - 2024

Exploring the inter-relationship between digital media and democracy, examining the literature of addiction, and investigating how threats to our well-being posed by climate change can be addressed through indigenous knowledge; are some of the research projects led by the second cohort of award-holders under the British Academy’s Global Professorships programme. Supported by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the UK Government’s National Productivity Investment Fund, the Global Professorships programme began in 2018, with a first cohort of award-holders appointed in early 2019. It provides mid-career to senior scholars, active in any discipline within the social sciences and the humanities and based in any country overseas, the opportunity to relocate to the UK for four years and pursue their individual research goals while contributing to UK higher education. The programme seeks to demonstrate and enhance the UK’s commitment to international research partnerships and collaboration as well as strengthen the UK’s research capacity and capability in the humanities and the social sciences. The ten scholars awarded Global Professorships under the second round of the programme come from South Asia, North America and the EU. Half of the successful applicants are active in disciplines within the humanities, with the other half pursuing research projects in the social sciences. The full list of award-holders: Law, Virtue and Political Community – Dr Maria Amalia Amaya Navarro, University of Edinburgh Romantic Melodrama: Feeling in Search of Form – Professor Michael Gamer, Queen Mary University of London Distributional Macroeconomics: Better Understanding the Two-Way Interaction of Inequality and the Macroeconomy – Professor Benjamin Moll, London School of Economics and Political Science The Literature of Addiction – Professor Robert Morrison, Bath Spa University Human Stress, Resilience and Adaptation in Ancient Northern Ireland and Scotland – Professor Marc Oxenham, University of Aberdeen Digital Media, Participation and Political Culture – Dr Aswin Punathambekar, Loughborough University Radical Activism and British Publishing for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Children – Professor Karen Sands O’Connor, Newcastle University Sexual Relations as International Relations – Dr Laura Sjoberg, Royal Holloway, University of London Indigenous Environmental History and Applied Traditional Ecological Knowledge – Professor Gregory Smithers, University of Hull Imagined Futures: Technology, Urban Planning and Their Subjects at the Margins of an Indian Megapolis – Professor Sanjay Srivastava, University College London. Professor Ash Amin, British Academy Foreign Secretary, said: ‘We are delighted to welcome this new cohort of British Academy Global Professors, who will be joining a wide range of higher education institutions across the UK and working on a fascinating set of projects. Our ambition is to support outstanding internationally-recognised scholars from around the world, enabling them to develop lasting networks and collaborations in the UK while drawing on their knowledge and expertise to drive excellence in UK research and higher education

AHRC/British Library CDP, “Indigenous Languages, Metadata & Decolonisation of the British Museum”, co-supervisor with Dr F. Fuentes, BL North American Curator (75k)

2019 - 2024

The British Library and the University of Hull are pleased to invite applications for a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD Studentship, starting from 1 October 2019. This doctoral award is funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council under its Collaborative Doctoral Programme. The research will be jointly supervised by Professor Joy Porter at the University of Hull, and Dr Fran Fuentes, Curator for North American Printed Collections at the British Library. The student will receive further support at the British Library from Nora McGregor, Digital Curator of the Digital Scholarship department, and from a secondary team at the forefront of indigenous language studies that includes, Professor Dale Turner (Anishinaabe), Department of Native Studies, Dartmouth College; Mishiikenh; Vernon Altiman, (Anishinaabe) Lecturer, Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures, Queen’s University, Ontario; Professor Marianne Mithun, President of the Association of American Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Leverhulme Major Research Fellow

2019 - 2022

Professor Joy Porter Awarded Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (GBP 155,473; MRF-2018-041) Joy Porter, a Professor of Indigenous History, has been awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust. She will explore the Nixon presidency and its remarkable environmental advances using Native American Indian Federal history as a lens. The Leverhulme Trust makes these awards to ‘enable well-established and distinguished researchers in the disciplines of the Humanities and Social Sciences to devote themselves to a single research project of outstanding originality and significance’. The Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship is widely considered the most prestigious personal research award given in the UK. The Fellowship will be for 36 months, commencing in September 2019. This ambitious project, entitled ‘ What Would Nixon Do?: The Forgotten Republican Roots of American Environmentalism’ will engage with conservative and Republican traditions at a critical moment in environmental history when conventional warnings are routinely dismissed by conservative voters as ‘fake news’. Commenting on this award, Professor Porter said: ‘Leverhulme Major Research Fellowships are an vitally important springboard for researchers in the humanities and social sciences that allow them to complete a substantial original piece of research with the potential to change how major issues are understood internationally. I am incredibly grateful to Leverhulme for this opportunity to produce an interdisciplinary book that it is hoped will influence a spectrum of interests currently conducting separate conversations.’ During the three years of the Fellowship, Professor Porter work with indigenous groups and travel to Alaska, California, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Professor Porter joins a notable cohort of scholars in the Department of History receiving Leverhulme awards in the last few years (Dr Amanda Capern (F, 2018), Dr C. Prior (F, 2017), Professor D. Crouch, MRF, 2015). The Leverhulme Trust was established by the Will of William Hesketh Lever, the founder of Lever Brothers. For more information, please visit www.leverhulme.ac.uk and follow the Trust on Twitter @LeverhulmeTrust For more about Professor Porter’s research and the work of the Treatied Spaces Research Cluster here: https://treatiedspaces.com/

PI Host, British Academy Visiting Fellowship, Professor Dale Turner, Department of Native Studies, Dartmouth, (25,554k)

2018 - 2019

We are pleased to welcome Professor Dale Turner of the Program in Native American Studies at Dartmouth College as a British Academy Visiting Fellow from August 2018. Recently, he visited the campus to speak on ‘What is Indigenous Spirituality?: Anishinaabe American Indian Political Thought in the 21st Century’. Responding to the limits of liberal theory to accommodate First Nations claims to sovereignty, he called for the development of a ‘third language’ of law as a solution to the limits of inherent and delegated forms of indigenous rights claims, which are ultimately adjudicated within the courts of the sovereign Canadian state. While at Hull, he also met with graduate students for an informal discussion of the links between historic and modern notions of treaty rights.

Committee/Steering group role

REF History UoA Sub-Panel Member 2019-2022

2019 - 2022

External examiner role

University of Bristol External Examiner Sustainability Summer School

2023 - 2026

External Examiner

2021 - 2024

Joy Porter is External Examiner for BA History, University of Bristol.

Government advisory role

REF Interdisciplinary Research Advisory Panel: Advisor to Main Panel D

2018 - 2022

Journal editorial role

Lead Editor Cambridge University Press Book Series "Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research"

2022 - 2028

Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research offers state-of-the-art interdisciplinary analyses within the rapidly growing area of Indigenous environmental research. The series investigates how environmental issues and processes relate to Indigenous socio-economic, cultural and political dynamics. Elements in the series will provide concise, timely publications for researchers, policy-makers, regulatory authorities, NGOs and activists. A key aim of the series is to be both global in scope and highly interdisciplinary, covering a range of issues, including water politics, Indigenous geographies of health & disease, bioprospecting and resource extraction, methodologies and approaches, ecologies of sovereignty, climate justice and activism, geopolitics and Indigenous territories, mobilities, migration and societal change. Interested in publishing an Element? Please send Matthias Wong a brief CV and a 250-word synopsis of how your Element in Indigenous Environmental Research will have research and policy impact.

National/International learned society/body role

NERC Reviewer

2018

Finnish Research Academy Reviewer

2018

RCUK Newton Fund Reviewer

2018

Fulbright Ambassador & Reviewer (History)

2016

Ambassador for the Fulbright US/UK Commission

Research assessment service

REF 2021 Panel member (UOA28) History

2018 - 2022

U.K. Research Excellence Framework History Sub-Panel Member for History & Interdisciplinary Advisor to Main Panel D.

AHRC Strategic Panel Member

2017 - 2027

Top