Laurence Butet-Roch (Ph.D. Environmental Studies, York University, 2024) is an environmental communication and visual media scholar dedicated to advancing representational justice. Her doctoral research, supported by a SSHRC scholarship and the Susan Mann Dissertation Award, considers how to bear witness to environmental harms caused by resource extraction /transformation without further reinscribing frontline communities and habitats as damaged, unworthy, and thus expendable. This project is grounded in the analysis of the Canadian news media coverage of Aamjiwnaang First Nation and uses participatory methods to create a layered visual discourse analysis. Her research interests draw on her professional experience as a writer and photographer focusing on environmental justice issues.
Fellowship Project
Sights of Resistance: The Media Iconography of the Wet’suwet’en Anti-Pipeline Movement
My postdoctoral research project engages with the visuality of extractivism by examining how antipipeline movements are depicted in major news outlets through the study of the mainstream media iconography of the Wet’suwet’en resistance to the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on their territory. Through a series of academic articles as well as new media experiments including digitally annotated photographs and podcast episodes coalesced into a dedicated multimedia long-form experience, this work will help champion visual approaches to energy reporting that eschew perpetuating harmful extractive and colonial narratives to meet environmental challenges with imagination, foresight, and fairness.