About us
We are a collaborative research group that works across disciplines and sectors to make treaties and environmental concerns central to education, policy and public understanding.
In this video Professor Joy Porter introduces the work of the Treatied Spaces Research Group, which is expanding our understanding of Indigenous treaties, resources and sovereignty. Led by Professor Joy Porter, the research group emphasises that Indigenous treaties, knowledge and rights are essential to solving global challenges such as water conservation, sustainable energy production and climate change adaption.
Treatied Spaces is an interdisciplinary research group based at the University of Birmingham, U.K. It brings together educators, Indigenous groups, museums, creative artists, NGOs and policymakers to foreground treaties and environmental concerns
We are grateful to United Kingdom Research and Innovation, the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust for their generous support.
Our aim is to deepen understanding of treaties as living and contested instruments of inter-cultural diplomacy. Historic and contemporary treaties remain central to the quest for social and environmental justice across the globe and are a foundation for renewed and more balanced relationships between Indigenous and settler communities. They shape our understanding of sovereignty over land, resources, peoples and environments on earth, in the seas and in space.
We advance these themes through research, publication, innovative digital platforms and data visualisation, public engagement and outreach, impact and other forms of knowledge exchange.
Funded Projects
‘Historic Houses, Global Crossroads: Revisioning Two Northern Ireland Historic Houses and Estates’.
AHRC Standard Research Grant, 2024-27.
‘Wiitkamaganak: Adoption and the Resurgence of Anishinaabe Citizenship Law‘.
Leverhulme Visiting Professorship, 2024-2025
‘Treatied States of America: Interior Diplomacy and the Contest for (Native) American Resources’.
Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, 2024-27
‘Brightening the Covenant Chain: Revealing Cultures of Diplomacy Between the Crown and the Iroquois Confederacy’
AHRC Standard Research Grant, 2021-24
‘Native Ecologies: A Deep History of Climate Change’
British Academy Global Professorship, 2020-24
‘Mahogany, Enslaved Africans, Miskito Indigenous People at Chiswick House, Kenwood and Marble Hill, North London’
AHRC / English Heritage / Historic England CDP, 2021-25
‘Indigenous Languages, Metadata & Decolonisation of the British Museum’
AHRC/British Library Collaborative Doctoral Project, 2019-24
‘What Would Nixon Do?: The Forgotten Republican Roots of American Environmentalism’
Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, 2019-22
‘A Tradition of Anishinaabe Diplomacy: Indigenous Spirituality in Anishinaabe Constitutionalism’
British Academy Visiting Fellowship, 2018
‘Conquest and the “Right to Hold”: Territorial Sovereignty and the American Revolution’
Leverhulme Research Fellowship, 2017-18.
About
We are a collaborative research group that works across disciplines and sectors to make treaties and environmental concerns central to education, policy and public understanding.
Collaborate
We welcome new collaborations with researchers, policy makers, governments and environmental enterprises.
Publish
Pitch your idea for Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research, a new Cambridge University Press print and digital book series.
