New Developments in Anarchist Studies

Jeff Shantz has been a community organizer, rank-and-file workplace activist and anarchist for decades. He is also the author and editor of several books and dozens of articles in both academic and movement publications.  (See his website for more details.)  He is currently teaching social justice, community advocacy and critical theory at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver. He is the founding editor of the journal Radical Criminology: An Insurgent Journal of Theory and Practice.  Besides compiling and editing the present collection (with pj lilley), he's also the general editor of this press, Thought|Crimes, which is an imprint of punctum books.

Dana Williams is an assistant professor of Sociology at California State University, Chico and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Akron. Williams has teaching and research interests in the areas of social inequalities (class, gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality intersectionality), social movements, political sociology, public sociology, organizations, and research methods. Published research has appeared in Teaching Sociology, Critical Sociology, Social Science Journal, Sociology of Sport Journal, and Race, Ethnicity & Education. Williams has also co-authored (with Jeff Shantz) a book entitled Anarchy & Society: Reflections on an Anarchist Sociology (available from Brill and Haymarket). Other interests include food security and cooperative food projects, permaculture, anarchist theory and practice, critical and people's histories, alternative transportation, and the free/libre/open-source software movement.

Department of Sociology, MA graduate student and teaching assistant

For the past fifteen years Michael Loadenthal, Ph.D, has been involved in a number of political projects around the world, and at present splits his time as an adjunct professor (Georgetown University & George Mason University), Dean's Merit Fellow (George Mason University), Practitioner in Residence (Georgetown University),  and research fellow (University of Cincinnati/Hebrew Union College).

Michael completed his Ph.D in Conflict Analysis & Resolution (2015) at George Mason University, focusing his dissertation on a discursive, linguistic and strategic investigation of clandestine, insurrectionary politics. This project is baed around developing an anti-securitization framework for understanding the communicative power of the communique. Michael completed a Master’s degree in Terrorism Studies (2010) at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (University of St. Andrews), focusing his dissertation on a mixed-method exploration of clandestine direct action and economic sabotage. Michael earned a dual BA in International Peace and Conflict Resolution (2006), and Women and Gender Studies (2006) at American University.

Brian Lovato is a political theorist currently living in the greater Seattle area. Drawing from Marxist, classical anarchist, post-structuralist, and decolonial thought, his work focuses primarily on social movements and the ways in which they engage issues of race, class, and gender.

Brian has taught courses on modern and contemporary political theory, revolutions and social movements, and introductory courses in comparative politics. He is also a founding editor of Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics.

For more information visit his academia.edu site here.

Independent Researcher, based in Durham, NC

Academia page

On twitter, follow @EliMeye

Jakub Burkowicz is a PhD Candidate (ABD) in Sociology at Simon Fraser University. He is currently completing his dissertation entitled: “Peripheral Europeans: The History of the (De)Racialization of Slavs in Canada.†Burkowicz’s research and teaching interests include sociological theory; sociology of knowledge; sociology of race focusing on racialization and the history of Slavic immigration in Canada; and social movements with emphases on anarchist and antiracist approaches. 

Faculty of Environmental Studies, Graduate Student

aglewis@yorku.ca

Anna Kruzynski, professor at the School of Community and Public Affairs at Concordia University, has sought, over the last fifteen years, to conjugate activism and intellectual work. Although she has been active in more mainstream community organizations and social movements, her heart lies with the more radical fringes of the larger global justice movement. She was first involved with a radical feminist collective (Nemesis) and is now a member of a neighbourhood-based antiauthoritarian affinity group, la Pointe libertaire, working towards the self-management of all aspects of community life.

Her research activity, using innovative participatory action research methodologies, aims to help activists and organisations document, analyse and reflect on their activism. She worked with the Popular Archives of Point St. Charles and a collective of women who have been involved in community organising for over 25 years to document the history of neighbourhood activism in a working class Montreal neighbourhood.

She also worked with the Collectif de recherche sur l'autonomie collective, a research group composed of antiauthoritarian (pro) feminist activists. The CRAC used participatory action research to document the activities of self-managed, contentious feminist and radical queer groups that have emerged in Quebec since the Zapatista uprising against neoliberalism in 1994. A repertoire of over a hundred self-managed organisations in Québec and four monographs (Liberterre, Ainsi Squattent-elles!, Les Panthères Roses and a portrait of two anti-authoritarian gardens) have been published, along with several academic and non-academic texts.

Aaron is a long time activist, DJ and community organizer, host of Roots Rock Rebel is a weekly music program at CKUT. "Mapping the constellations between reggae, soul music, & a liberated world."  He tweets at:

@Ckutnews coordinator, host of @rebelbeatradio

He also works with the Collectif de recherche sur l'autonomie collective, a research group composed of antiauthoritarian (pro) feminist activists.

Militante et membre du Collectif de recherche sur l’autonomie collective

"RAC-K is an autonomous research collective with anti-authoritarian, feminist and against all forms of oppression affinities. Working as we do in other autonomous anti-authoritarian collectives, we see a profound potential for social transformation through engaged reflection on our individual and collective actions. This is among the many reasons that we are engaged in the CRAC-K research project, which explores specific experiences with anti-authoritarian modes of autonomous collective organizing in Quebec since 1995. Currently, in addition to having developed a kind of yellow pages of autonomous collectives in Quebec—our repertoire—we are also in the process of producing monographs about several pro-feminist anti-authoritarian groups and networks."

Katherine Dunster is a landscape architect and biologist whose professional work focuses on the planning, conservation, and management of natural and cultural landscapes. 

He is an assistant professor of English and the director of the university core at Fairleigh Dickinson University - Vancouver. He has taught courses in English, communications and media studies, humanities, and music to a wide range of audiences, including seniors, northern communities and the military.

Gifford was born and raised on the B.C. coast. He was a postdoctoral fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and he completed his PhD in English at the University of Alberta as a Killam doctoral fellow. He also holds degrees in humanities and music, and he is a three-time alumnus of the Opera Studio at the Victoria Conservatory of Music.

Much of his work derives from archival research. He recently prepared scholarly editions of Lawrence Durrell's novels, Pied Piper of Lovers and Panic Spring, and is now editing the 10-year correspondence between Robert Graves and Aemilia Laracuen as well as a critical edition of the works of Edward Taylor Fletcher, a 19th-century Canadian poet.

Gifford has also completed a teaching edition of Oscar Wilde's 1890 version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Some of his past editorial work includes a scholarly edition of the letters of Henry Miller and Herbert Read as well as the Culture + the State series.

The Beehive Design Collective is a wildly motivated, all-volunteer, activist arts collective dedicated to “cross-pollinating the grassroots†by creating collaborative, anti-copyright images for use as educational and organizing tools. We work as word-to-image translators of complex global stories, shared with us through conversations with affected communities.