Jessica Bardill

Jessica Bardill is an Associate Professor of Indigenous Literatures and Cultures in the Department of English.  Alongside a range of literature from Indigenous communities, she also engages with the possibilities of biological sciences and policy, with particular emphasis on genetics and genomics by, for, and with Indigenous peoples.  Since 2011, she has helped to the lead the decolonial bioethics training for the Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics (SING) program in the U.S. as well as in Aotearoa in 2016, and is working with collaborators at University of Alberta, Simon Fraser University, and University of Manitoba to start similar workshops in Canada. Indigenous writing and knowledges, as well as diverse ways of questioning and apprehending the world, are central to her research and teaching. Her published work has interrogated the use of genetic testing for tribal citizenship purposes, documented the oral history of the Native American community in the Triad region of North Carolina, and examined literature alongside case studies of the treatment of disinterred ancient individuals. Other current work includes a project on reconsidering discussions of consent in relation to lands, bodies, and data, through bringing Indigenous literatures into conversation with bioethics. Prior to her current position, she was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois and a Lecturer in the Thinking Matters Program at Stanford University, and served as a postdoctoral fellow for the Genome, Ethics, Law, and Policy (GELP) program at Duke University. She received her BA in English and biology from Emory University and her PhD in English from Duke University.

The Concordia links for my research are https://indigenoussts.com/sing-canada/for a project with collaborator at the University of Alberta.