Dr. James Stinson

Senior Research Associate & Evaluation Specialist

With a PhD in Cultural Anthropology, James Stinson is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator specializing in political ecology, protected area management, planetary health and sustainability education. As a Senior Research Associate and Evaluation Specialist with the Young Lives Research Lab at York University, and Adjunct Graduate Faculty Member in the Department of Anthropology at Trent University, he is motivated by a deep and sincere commitment to engage with the most pressing issues facing our world today, including how cultivate a more just, healthy, and sustainable future for humans and all life on earth.

A primary focus of James’ research and teaching is the political ecology of biodiversity conservation and protected area management. James’ graduate research examined the promotion and practice of community-based conservation in Belize, Central America. While his M.A. research explored the promotion of community-based ecotourism as a form of sustainable development, his doctoral research focussed on a case study of Indigenous-led co-management of the Sarstoon-Temash National Park (STNP) in southern Belize. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Belize funded by SSHRC and IDRC, his doctoral dissertation explored the participation of Indigenous Q’eqchi’ Maya communities in the co-management of the STNP, specifically in the context of conflict over oil exploration and Indigenous land rights.

After completing his PHD, James continued his research as a Postdoctoral Researcher with the project “Canadian Conservation in Global Context” (CCGC) in the Department of Geography at York University. In this position, James’ examined the impacts of neoliberalization on national park management in Canada, specifically examining the Healthy Parks Healthy People movement and the re-framing of national parks as sites of health promotion, vital to the physical and economic wellbeing of the Canadian nation. His work in this area also studied efforts by Parks Canada and other conservation organizations to engage youth and re-connect them with nature through digital technologies and new media.

His most recent research in this area examines the phenomenon of “smart conservation.” As Principal Investigator of a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for the project “Smart Conservation and the Production of Nature 3.0 in Belize” this research explores how digital surveillance technologies, big data, and artificial intelligence are being used in the context of conservation to facilitate a militarized approach to protected area management based on “real time” pre-emption and “predictive policing” of poaching and wildlife crime.  

A second area of James’ research and teaching is the field of planetary health and sustainability education. As a member of the Young Lives Research Lab and Dahdaleh Institute of Global Health Research at York University, James has collaborated with a transdisciplinary group of scholars and community-based partners across the Americas on several projects of youth-led research and educational outputs related to wellbeing, climate change and planetary health. In doing this James has collaborated on the the Planetary Health Film Lab (PHFL), a yearly program that trains and supports groups of young people around the world in the production of short documentary films for submission to the United Nation’s Youth Climate Report, an interactive online geo-spatial database of youth-created films supported by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) that serves as a resource for policy makers attending COP climate conferences. In 2023, James led and facilitated the PHFL program in Belize.

In 2020, James was awarded a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant for the project New Journey to Save Fish: Oshki Maadaadiziwin Jaa Bimaaji'ut Gigooyike. The project was designed and delivered in partnership with the Bagida’waad Alliance, an Indigenous environmental NGO founded by members of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. The project provided training to Indigenous youth in digital media production and supported them in the production of short documentary films on issues relating to climate change and planetary health. These films were uploaded to the Youth Climate Report and presented at the 2021 United Nations COP 26, and were also mobilized through an online Indigenous Youth Planetary Health Film Festival, co-authored conference papers presented at the annual meetings of the International Association of Great Lakes Research (2021) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (2021), as well as a co-authored blog post for the Canadian Climate Institute as part of their “Indigenous Perspectives” series.

In 2021, James’ collaboration with the Bagida’waad Alliance was extended into the area of experiential land-based learning as Principal Investigator of a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant for the project “Planetary Health Partnership: Anishinaabe youth guardians, land-based learning, and the practice of living well with the world.” Work on this project has supported Indigenous Anishinaabe youth in species identification and habitat restoration projects, the implementation of seasonal hiking, canoeing, and dogsledding programs, a multi-day ceremonial canoe journey (and documentary film) to highlight the effects of climate change on Lake Huron, an Indigenous youth water walk to raise public awareness about opioid addiction, and a recent youth climate exchange to Churchill, Manitoba.

James’ work in this area also extends internationally as Co-Principle Investigator of the “Partnership for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing,” funded by York University through its Catalyzing Interdisciplinary Research Clusters (CIRC) initiative. This project has mobilized over 100 Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth from across the Americas, including, Canada, Belize, Chile, Costa Rica and Jamaica, as community researchers to further our understandings of youth wellbeing and promote education and advocacy for a more sustainable and just future. As the lead for project activities in Belize, James has worked in partnership with the Julian Cho Society to mentor and support  a team of Indigenous Maya youth in community-based research and education related to social and ecological wellbeing, and in the production of 8 youth-made films on planetary health that are included in the Youth Climate Report and screened at the UN’s COP 28 in Dubai in 2023. The team in Belize is currently working on a youth-led social media campaign promoting youth and Elder perspectives on wellbeing across the domains of land and environment, culture, family and community, education, and digital technologies.

In addition to academic publications, James has written for The Conversation, the Canadian Climate Institute, Mountain Life Magazine, Wildlife Australia, and facilitated the production of Indigenous films for the United Nation’s Youth Climate Report.

Contact Dr. James Stinson: stinsonj@yorku.ca

Associations

American Anthropology Association (AAA)

Association of American Geographers (AAG)

Canadian Anthropology Association (CASCA)

Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG)

Society for Applied Anthropology (SFAA)

Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI)

Selected Publications

Peer Reviewed Articles

Tilleczek, Kate C., Mark Terry, Deborah MacDonald, James Orbinski, and James Stinson. (2023). Towards Youth-Centred Planetary Health Education. Challenges 14, no. 1 (2023): 1-14.

Stinson, James and Lunstrum, Elizabeth. (2021). Biocultural Nation Making: Biopolitics, Cultural-Territorial Belonging, and National Protected Areas. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 0(0) 1-22.  

Stinson, James. (2017). Re-creating Wilderness 2.0: Or, Getting Back to Work in a Virtual Nature. Geoforum, 79: 174-187.

Book Chapters

Stinson, James. (Forthcoming) “The Trouble with Wildeverse: Or Re-connecting Youth to an Augmented Nature.”  In Kate Tilleczek (ed.), Villains and Vagabonds: Youth and Digital Technology in Various Contexts. University of Toronto Press.

Stinson, James. (2016). “Mother Nature’s Best Kept Secret? Exploring the Discursive Terrain and Lived Experience of the Ecotourism/Extraction Nexus in Southern Belize.” In Bram Büscher and Veronica Davidov (eds.), The Ecotourism/Extraction Nexus: Political Economies and Rural Realities of (un)Comfortable Bedfellows. Routledge. 

Web-Based Publications

Stinson, James and McLoughlin, Lee. (2024). How Climate Change is Undermining Indigenous Knowledge and Livelihoods in Central America. The Conversation (Oct. 1, 2024).  

Stinson, James. (2024). Creating a path to well-being through human-animal partnership. Mountain Life (January 2024).

Stinson, James and McLoughlin, Lee. (2022). Digital technology for biodiversity protection and climate action: Solution or COP out? The Conversation (Dec. 2022).

Stinson, James (2022). Paddling For Planetary Health: How nibi (water) can connect and heal us. Mountain Life (Fall 2022).

Akiwenzie, Natasha, Victoria Serda and James Stinson. (2022). The Bagida’waad Alliance: Finding our way in the fog and charting a new course. Indigenous Perspectives Series, Canadian Climate Institute. (June 23, 2022).

Stinson, James. (2021). Mutual Care: Rethinking Our Relationship with Outdoor Spaces. Mountain Life (Fall 2021): The Resilience Issue: 47–48.

Stinson, James and Lunstrum, Elizabeth. (2020). Coronavirus closures could lead to radical revolution in conservation. The Conversation (May 2020). 

Stinson, James. (2017). Welcome to Wilderness 2.0: From (Dis)Connection to (Re)Creation. Wildlife  Australia, 54(4): 15-17.