Mathew Arthur | +1 604 842-4412 | 2019 East 5th Avenue Vancouver, British Columbia Canada, V5N 1M3 |
2025 PhD Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Simon Fraser University (ABD)
2018 MA Indigenous and Interreligious Studies, Vancouver School of Theology
Feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS) Material and Posthuman Feminisms Feminist Methods | Affect and Ordinary Studies Indigenous Futurisms Digital Humanities |
2023– | Executive Director of Doing STS, a Vancouver-based feminist technoscience and affect studies methods lab (nonprofit S0077711) that weaves together public education, grassroots design, independent publishing, and DIY practice.
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2020– Ongoing | Founding director of Society for the Study of Affect (SSA). Through in-person and virtual events like conferences and workshops, open access publishing, social media, and non-institutional modes of mentorship, SSA fosters a lively and engaged local and international community of affect study. |
2024 | Travel and Research Awards | $750 |
2024 | Simon Fraser University Thesis Completion Fellowship | $7000 |
2021-24 | SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship—Doctoral (CGS D) | $105,000 |
2023 | Graduate Student Society Award | $500 |
2023 | Travel and Research Awards | $1,200 |
2020 | National Council of Jewish Women Scholarship | $900 |
2020 | Margaret and Claude Mitchell Graduate Award | $2,300 |
2019-24 | Simon Fraser University Graduate Fellowships | $70,000 |
2019–20 | Simon Fraser University Dean’s Graduate Fellowship | $5,000 |
2019–20 | British Columbia Graduate Scholarship | $30,000 |
2016 | Ezra Allen Osterhout Prize in Ethics | $4,000 |
2024–26 | Managing editor of Performance Matters journal, Institute for Performance Studies, Simon Fraser University |
2020– | Founding editor-in-chief (with Gregory J. Seigworth) and book and web designer for Imbricate! Press, an open access imprint publishing experimental affect and cultural studies work. |
2016– | Founding editor-in-chief and graphic and web designer for Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry with Open Humanities Press. Member of the Radical Open Access Collective. |
Books | 2026 | Making Stories for a Broken World, Advanced Methods: New Research Ontologies Series, Punctum Press (forthcoming). Grounded in design and DIY as ritual practices, this book develops anticolonial STS methods. |
2025 | Editor (with Gregory J. Seigworth, Wendy J. Truran, and Chad Shomura), Capacities To: Affect Up Against Fascism, Imbricate Press.
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2023 | Editor, Everything is a Lab: Doing Ordinary Science, Imbricate Press. This volume collects artifacts and writing from a year’s worth of public workshops that put STS and affect studies together through zinemaking, foraging, fermenting, amateur perfumery, and sensory methods. | |
Refereed Articles | 2024 2020 | “STS and Affect in the Wild,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science (forthcoming) “Writing Pandemic Feels,” Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, vol. 2, nos. 1–2 |
2020 | “Four Alleys,” Visual and New Media Review, Fieldsights (online) | |
2018 | “Composting Settler Nationalisms,” Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, vol. 1, no. 3 (with Reuben Jentink) | |
Reference Entries | 2020 | “Affect Studies,” Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory, ed. Eugene O’Brian, Oxford University Press
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Chapters | 2025 | “Quarantine”, The Matter of Hospitals: An Alphabetical Investigation, ed. Anna Harris, Maaastrich University Press
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2025 | “Jargon” (with Annie Zeng), The Matter of Hospitals: An Alphabetical Investigation, ed. Anna Harris, Maaastrich University Press
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2021 | “Foreword: Working the Social, Otherwise,” Postanthropo- | |
2019 | “Writing Affect and Theology in Indigenous Futures,” Religion, Emotion, Sensation: Affect Theories and Theologies, eds. Karen Bray and Stephen Moore, Fordham University Press | |
Review | 2019 | “Bodying Difference Differently: Immersions in Cultural Difference by Natalie Alvarez,” Canadian Theatre Review, no. 176 |
Series | 2025 | No Surrender: Cultural Studies with Lawrence Grossberg, eds. Jennifer Daryl Slack, Andrew Davis, John Erni, Carolyn Hardin, and Gilbert B. Rodman, Imbricate! Press (forthcoming) |
2021 | Affects, Interfaces, Events, eds. Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen, Jette Kofoed, and Jonas Fritsch, Imbricate! Press | |
Interview | 2018 | Theresa Schütz, “Affective Societies, Affected Scientists!” |
Instructor | 2025 | WGST 224: “Gender, Health, and Disability,” Capilano University
WGST 240: “Feminist Technoscience,” Capilano University
WGST 250: “Gender and Pop Culture” Capilano University
INTS 310: “Interdisciplinary Research Methods” Capilano University
WGST 320: “Feminist Killjoys: Gender, Race, and Activism” Capilano University
WGST 360: “Contemporary Topics in Women’s and Gender Studies: Making Feminisms,” Capilano University
WGST 401: “Queer Histories, Theories, and Futures,” Capilano University
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2024– | WGST 100: “Introduction to Women’s Studies” GSWS 411: “Feminist Worldbuilding: Figuration, Affect, Play,” Simon Fraser University. Methods of “figuration” and worlding across feminist STS and affect studies through the works of Donna Haraway and Kathleen Stewart (our guest lecturer). Assignments included a worldbuilding board game final project. GSWS 321: “Making Feminisms: Technoscience, Disability, DIY,” Simon Fraser University. Explored the fields of feminist STS, cyberfeminisms, and disability studies in relation to making practices like crafting, hacking, design, and architecture. | |
Public Humanities | 2021 | Humanities 101 Public Program: “Haraway Talks: Reading and Figuring Worlds,” University of British Columbia. This weekly public STS seminar at the Vancouver Public Library with residents of the Downtown Eastside explored how human and nonhuman lives are tangled up in histories of science and empire through Donna Haraway’s work. |
2020 | Humanities 101 Public Program: “Speculative Matters: Making Worlds With Zines,” University of British Columbia. Rooted in feminist STS theory, this weekly public workshop at the VPL with residents of the Downtown Eastside explored “speculative fabulation” through book and zinemaking techniques and other critical design practices. | |
2016–19 | Humanities 101 Public Program: “Doing Feminist, Queer, and Indigenous STS,” University of British Columbia. This weekly public technoscience salon at the Carnegie Community Centre with residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside covered feminist science studies basics—from the performativity of lab practices and material-semiotic approaches to technology through to multispecies studies and Indigenous sciences. | |
Volunteer | 2020 | HUM 101: “All the Feels: Introduction to Affect Studies,” University of British Columbia |
2017–19 | HUM 101: “Doing New Media: Cyberspace and Indigenous Futurisms,” University of British Columbia | |
Teaching Assistant | 2015 | TH855: “Forms of Radical Relationality,” Dr. Sallie McFague, Vancouver School of Theology |
2014 | TH755: “Postmodern Theology,” Dr. Sallie McFague, | |
Workshops | 2025 | “Playing with Clinical Jargon” with Making Clinical Sense and Fringe Editions, Maastricht University
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2024 | “WriteLab: Patchy Anthropocene,” Studio Utopia, Vancouver. Reading group and environmental humanities writing workshop.
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2024 | “Smellworlds,” Promises/Impasses/Threats/Settlings conference, Society for the Study of Affect, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Sensory methods and ethnography workshop.
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2023 | “Critical Herbalism,” Studio Utopia, Vancouver. This public workshop with Hayden Ostrom explored Traditional Chinese Medicine and contemporary herbalism in the context of feminist and Indigenous science studies. | |
2023 | “Climate Mourning Slow and Soft,” Simon Fraser University. | |
2023 | “Perceptual Ferment,” Studio Utopia, Vancouver. This public workshop with Erin Manning explored vinegar fermentation through Black studies and theories of neurodiversity. | |
2023 | “Pollinator Smellwalk,” Pollinator Pop-up Park, Vancouver. This public workshop with Ceall Quinn engaged walking methods to explore the sensory worlds of urban bees. | |
2022 | “Smellworlds: Minor Sense,” 3Ecologies Institute, Montréal. Organized by Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, this multi-day keynote and workshop assembled an international group of scholars to explore critical fermentation and DIY perfumery practices alongside philosophies of sense and movement. | |
2018 | “Can the Other of Affect Studies Speak?,” Freie Universität Berlin. This keynote and workshop for the weeklong “Power of Immersion: Performance, Affect, Politics” Affective Societies Spring School offered a critical intervention to performance and theatre studies from material cultures of Indigenous ecological activism. | |
Guest | 2024 | Adobe InDesign tutorial for ENGL 396 “Literary Publishing,”
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2024 | “Affect and Animism,” for RELS 3302 “Affect Theory and Religion,” Dr. Lisa Gasson-Gardner, Mount Royal University
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2023 | “Smellworlds: Affect and the Colonial Sensorium,” for | |
2022 | “Performativity Beyond Bodies,” for GSWS 822: | |
2022 | “Composting Futures,” for 321230019: “More Than Worms: Radical Composting for Urban Transformation,” | |
2021 | “Working the Social, Otherwise,” for SOWK 397: “Practice | |
2019 | “Indigenizing Anxieties,” for COMM 431: “The Body in Communication,” Dr. Gregory J. Seigworth, Millersville University |
Organizing | 2025 2024 2021–24 | “#SCAR: Subjection, Cosmology, Authority, Realism,” Society for the Study of Affect Summer School, Albuquerque, New Mexico. With Gregory J. Seigworth, Kathleen Stewart, Dylan Robinson, Oliver Y. Shao, Asilia Franklin-Phipps, and Bretton Varga.
“Promises/Impasses/Threats/Settlings,” Society for the Study of Affect, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Lead organizer for this multi-venue conference with 15 keynote speakers, 40 panels, 20 workshops, art installations, film screenings, and over 150 papers. Managed $50k+ budget, produced a 170-page program, liaised with university press vendors, and designed conference website, merchandise, and signage. Chair and organizer for the Westar Institute’s |
2020 | Co-organizer of “#AffectMAPS: Methods, Affects, Practices, Sensibilities,” University of Kentucky | |
2018 | Co-organizer of “Animations and Provocations: Society for the Study of Affect Summer School,” Millersville University | |
2017 | Co-organizer of “Capacious: Affect Inquiry/Making Space,” Millersville University | |
Keynotes | 2025
2024 2023 | Panel series organizer with Claire Fitch, “What Can a Conference Panel Do?,” Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Annual Meeting, Seattle Panel organizer with Alana Brekelmans, “Theory’s Otherwise Textures,” Affect #PITS, Millersville University “Author Meets Critic, Winner of the 2023 Ludwig Fleck Prize: Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin by Donovan O. Schaefer,” invited respondent, Society for |
2023 | “Threads and Entanglements: Talking Affect Studies | |
2023 | Chair and organizer of “Smellworlds,” Society for | |
2023 | Moderator and respondent to Thomas Arentzen and Biko Mandela Gray for “Roots, Matters, Lessons,” Westar Institute’s Seminar on the Human Future | |
2023 | “Composting Settler Nationalisms,” Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts Annex (with Reuben Jentink) | |
2022 | “Smellworlds: Minor Sense,” 3Ecologies Institute, Montréal | |
2022 | Respondent to Marion Grau and Melanie Harris,“Energy and Anxiety,” Westar Institute’s Seminar on the Human Future | |
2022 | Moderator and respondent to Julie Wilson and Emily Chivers Yochim for “Crisis and Commitment,” Westar Institute’s Seminar on the Human Future | |
2022 | Panelist for “Christianity Interrupted,” Westar Think Tank | |
2022 | Respondent to Eva Haifa Giraud for “What Comes Before Entanglement?,” Westar Institute’s Seminar on the | |
2021 | “DESIGN_SPACE: Technicities and the Built Environment,” Ecologies of Architecture, TU Delft, Netherlands | |
2019 | “Indigenous Futures, Multispecies Theologies,” | |
Papers | 2025 2024 2023 | “Making Room for STS Vibework,” Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Annual Meeting, Seattle
“Imploding Gender and Sexuality Studies” (with Coleman Nye), Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Annual Meeting, Seattle
“Smellworlds: Vibes, Regionality, Synaesthetic Writing,” “Forage, Tincture, Age: DIY Perfumery as STS Method,” |
2023 | “Doing STS: WriteLab, Otherwise Tastes, Smellworlds,” | |
2022 | “Compost Futures,” GroundWork Dialogues Symposium | |
2021 | “Compost to Compostables: Now, What Other Figurations?,” Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Annual Meeting | |
2021 | “Scenting Relations: Exploring Smellworlds through Zine-Making,” Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) | |
2021 | “Making Feminisms,” Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Colloquium, Simon Fraser University | |
2020 | “Speculative Matters: Dreaming Up More Just Worlds Across Feminist and Indigenous Technoscience,” A Dialogue with Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Simon Fraser University | |
2020 | “Unruly Figurations: Storying Regeneration in Feminist and Indigenous Technoscience,” Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Colloquium, Simon Fraser University | |
2019 | “Composting New/Material/Education,” New Materialist Reconfigurations of Higher Education, University of | |
2019 | “(un)building as (un)bodying: In the Alongside of Imperial Knowledge Formations and Anticolonial Body-Makings,” American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Honolulu | |
2019 | “Terraforming Theologies: Ecology, Affect, Indigeneity,” | |
2018 | “Ecological Panic! (On Anticolonial Affect),” Capacious: | |
2017 | “Doing Multispecies Rituals,” Unravelling Religion 4: | |
2016 | “Composting Settler Nationalisms,” Mikinaakominis/TransCanadas, University of Toronto | |
2016 | “Path Dependence: Affect, Practice, and Indigenous Self-Determination,” Fifteenth Transdisciplinary | |
2015 | “Spirited Matter: Animisms, Indigenous Resurgence, |
2022–24 | Chair of Westar Institute’s Seminar on the Human Future. I organized and moderated biannual meetings and public scholarship around petrocultures and climate, Black feminist ecospiritualities, and Afro |
2014–20 | Facilitator for Humanities 101 Community Program, University of British Columbia. I volunteered as a teacher and discussion facilitator for two yearly courses for residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and South including refugees, ESL learners, residential school survivors, and others with barriers to access university-level education. |
2014 | Technology and engagement coordinator for the Transcultural Dialogue Initiative, VP Students Portfolio, University of British Columbia. I developed and moderated an online platform and series of video resources for this cross-faculty initiative that gathered undergraduate students for conversations on leadership, race, and ecology. |
Radical Open Access Collective (ROAC)
American Studies Association (ASA)
Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)
Society for the Study of Affect (SSA)
Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry
Duke University Press
Journal of Embodied Research
Mattering Press
Performance Matters
Public Philosophy Journal
Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies
Science as Culture
Science, Technology, and Human Values
Social Media + Society
2018–19 | Service and communication designer for Kudoz, a learning platform | ||
2012–24 | Freelance communication design practice, clients include:
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2017–18 | Graphic designer and UI/UX for Roden Gray, men’s streetwear retailer | ||
2016–17 | UI/UX designer for Native Shoes | ||
2007–13 | Schematic and graphic designer for Douglas Coupland’s public art practice (CMYK Productions) | ||
2009–12 | Communications designer for molo, selected projects include:
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2007–9 | Director of communications, Henriquez Partners Architects,
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2007 | Technician and graphic designer for Special Screencraft Printers. | ||
2006–7 | Graphic Designer, Fulcrum Publications, Toronto | ||
2005 | Packaging Designer, Aris Imports, Montréal | ||
2001–2 | Advertising Layout Clerk, Times Colonist Newspaper, Victoria |