Kristen Bos

Areas of Interest

• Indigenous feminisms
• Feminist, decolonial and Indigenous science and technology studies
• Environmental justice
• Material culture
• Intersectional, transnational, decolonial, feminist and queer theory

Biography

Dr. Kristen Bos is Assistant Professor of Indigenous Science and Technology Studies in the Historical Studies Department at the University of Toronto Mississauga, with a graduate appointment in Women and Gender Studies Institute. She is an Indigenous feminist researcher trained in archaeological approaches to material culture as well as an Indigenous science and technology studies (STS) researcher, who is concerned with the relationship between colonial, gendered, and environmental violence. 

Dr. Bos is also the co-director of the Indigenous-led Technoscience Research Unit (TRU), which has developed an internationally recognized focus on Indigenous STS, Indigenous Environmental Data Justice, and Indigenous approaches to chemicals and sustainability. In 2023, the TRU became the social science lead lab in the Acceleration Consortium’s successful Canada First Research Excellence Fund, the largest grant of its kind in the history of Canada. Within this work, the TRU is creating innovative protocols and research designs that bring Indigenous methods into chemical research, such as in relation to what constitutes a sustainable substance and how to ethically govern the new era of artificial intelligence 

Dr. Bos is Red River Métis and an intergenerational survivor of the Sixties Scoop and the residential school system through her mother and grandmother, respectively. While she is based in Toronto, her homelands are in northern Alberta in Treaty 8 territory — or where prairie transitions into boreal forest.  

She is the author of the upcoming novel, The Interrogation Room (Alchemy by Knopf, 2025). 

She is also accepting applications from graduate students who are interested in Indigenous science, technology, and environmental studies—broadly speaking!

Education

PhD, University of Toronto (expected 2020-21)

MSt, University of Oxford

Selected Works

Forthcoming: 

The Interrogation Room (Alchemy by Knopf), forthcoming. 

what the seed beads saw: Indigenous Feminist Disruptions of Colonial, Gendered and Environmental Violence, forthcoming.

Bos, Kristen and Vanessa Gray. “The Land Behind the Fence Is Still Sacred:” Activating Decolonial Data Possibilities and Land Futures in Chemical Valley with the Pollution Reporter App.” In Unsettling Technoscience, edited by Tom Özden-Schilling, Denielle Elliott, Dian Million, and Candis Callison. Duke University Press, forthcoming. 

Published: 

Gray, Vanessa, Beze Gray, M. Fernanda Yanchapaxi, Kristen Bos, and M. Murphy. 2023. “Data Colonialism in Canada’s Chemical Valley: Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the Failure of the Pollution Notification System.” The Yellowhead Institute.

Bos, Kristen. 2023. “Seed Bead Inheritances and Other Toxicities” in Sketches on Everlasting Plastics edited by Isabelle Kirkham-Lewitt and Joanna Joseph. Columbia Books on Architecture and the City.*

*This piece was also displayed and circulated with original media from artist Claire Johnston (Red River Méts) at the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, May 20, 2023-November 26, 2023.

Teaching

Undergraduate Courses:

HIS255H5: Histories of Extraction and the Future of the Environment 

WGS348H5: Sex, Gender and the Environment

Graduate Courses:

WGS1004H: Decolonial and Feminist Technoscience: Another University is Possible