Jody Berland

Jody Berland is a Canadian scholar, full professor emerita and senior scholar at York University. She was awarded the Gertrude J. Robinson Book Prize by the Canadian Communication Association.

She is the Principal Investigator of the SSHRC-funded multidisciplinary research project Digital Animalities: Media Representations of Nonhuman Life in the Age of Risk.

Her scholarship is known for its focus on how media technologies, environmental issues, and cultural phenomena interact and how they shape and mediate human and nonhuman experiences. Her work explores topics, including media theory, music and technology, feminism, human- animal relations, digital media, weather and climate, and sound studies.

Early life and education Berland was born in Iowa City and moved to Regina, Canada with her family when she was twelve. Her academic journey began with a double BA in English and Sociology and an MA in Special Arrangements (Interdisciplinary Studies) from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She earned her PhD in Social and Political Thought from York University.

Career and research After teaching at Trent University and Carleton University she moved to the Department of Humanities at Atkinson College, York University, and later the Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, where she taught and conducted research for several decades. She served on the board of the Canadian Association of Learned Journals for some years. She was a co-founder of the YUFA Climate Emergency Committee, advocating for the inclusion of climate change education within academic curriculum.

She served as co-founder and Editor of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies from 1998 to 2015.

Berland's research interests have evolved to address pressing global issues, such as climate change, ecological risk, and posthumanism. Her book, Virtual Menageries: Animals as Mediators in Network Cultures, examines the role of animals as active mediators in the dissemination of colonial power relations and contemporary digital networks.

Her articles have appeared in journals such as the Canadian Journal of Communications, Cultural Studies, Humanimalia, Global South and New Formation.

Selected bibliography

Monographs

Books

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Journal articles