Joshua Smith

Joshua Smith is a PhD student at the University of Western Ontario. His work in the critical study of the histories of anthropology focuses on the political philosophies and cultural (re)productions of engaged anthropological research with an emphasis on the political matrix particular to the colonial encounters of North America. Under the supervision of Dr. Regna Darnell, his work is looking at the historical and theoretical genealogies of  contemporary engaged research methods such as community based participatory research and collaborative ethnography including their continuous and/or divergent relationships with the past anthropological engagements such as Franz Boas and Sol Tax, for example. Moreover, Joshua is working on Settler and Indigenous relations with a specific focus on the (mis)communication(s) that occur between what is often referred to as the “stakeholders” in collaborative research and community based projects. This includes questions around knowledge production, transference, translation, and the political dynamics that these are mediated and negotiated through. Joshua is working on these questions with the Walpole Island First Nation in Southwest Ontario.