settler colonial studies blog

Women settlers: Kelly McMichael, ‘Redefining Frontier Womanhood: Irish Female Landownership in Mexican Texas’, Journal of Texas History, 1, 2, pp. 29-62

06Dec25

Abstract: This article argues that Catholic Irish women who settled in Mexican Texas in the 1830s reshaped gender hierarchies through landownership and legal agency. Unlike their counterparts in Ireland and the United States, these women entered a Spanish-derived civil law system that recognized their right to own, manage, and defend property. Drawing on petitions, land grants, and case studies focusing on female immigrants like Elizabeth Hart and Anne Burke, the article shows how legal pluralism and frontier necessity enabled Irish women to exercise economic and civic power. Their experiences challenge male-centered narratives and demonstrate how law, migration, and circumstance reshaped gendered authority in early Texas.

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When home is where the settler is: Lisa Binkley (ed.), Dwelling on the Margins of Empire: Colonized and Indigenous Peoples’ Imaginaries of Home, Bloomsbury, 2025

06Dec25

Abstract: Embracing the concept of marginality as a method for recovering histories of home, this book explores communities that have been seen to exist outside of western models of nineteenth- and twentieth-century domesticity, particularly as they were transplanted in – and transformed by – settler, Indigenous, and imperial geographies across the globe. In focusing their attention on Indigenous perspectives on home in the face of – and despite – colonial dislocations, both cultural and territorial, several contributors expose home’s function as a site of cultural vitality and political resistance, as well as colonial violence, across a range of geographical contexts. In addition to highlighting previously marginalised, non-western perspectives on home, this collection explores the operation of domestic politics within nominally undomesticated spaces, as well as within seemingly “unhomely” historical experiences – such as political activism, intergenerational trauma, and geographical exploration. In so doing, it invites critical re-evaluations of home as a category of analysis within imperial, settler colonial, and Indigenous histories on a variety of fronts. Chapters are organised around three key themes, previously positioned in opposition to normative understandings of home, that contributors have reimagined as intrinsic to material and imagined geographies of home: travel and mobility; politics and public life; and colonial violence.

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A divided city (divided by settler colonialism, that is): Justine Skilling, John Reid, Steve Matthewman, ‘A tale of two cities: urban greening projects in a settler society’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

05Dec25

Abstract: We are witnessing an urban green turn. Urban greening is frequently proposed as a solution to numerous issues ensuing from this. However, as with other settler societies, urban greening in New Zealand occurs on unceded Indigenous lands. It must contend with the foundational violences upon which its cities are built and be developed as rangatiratanga [chiefly authority, sovereign] space. We explore such challenges via two case studies in the country’s two largest cities: (1) Ngahere regeneration in Ngā Hau Māngere, Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), which seeks to create forests and food gardens in the Local Board with the lowest tree canopy in the city; (2) The Residential Red Zone in Ōtautahi (Christchurch), which resulted from damage from the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence. It is arguably the largest example of managed retreat in an urban setting globally. We argue that the only viable urban greening governance frameworks are those which involve substantive power-sharing with mana whenua [people with customary authority over the land], that de-prioritise settler amenity and environmental service functions in favour of Indigenous cultural resurgence, and which centre cultural integrity, historical redress, and spiritual relationships to place.

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Unresponsive academics (i.e., unresponsive to genocide, scholasticide and settler colonialism): Nicola Pratt, ‘Scholasticide in Gaza: Settler Colonial Elimination, Genocide, and the Crisis of Academic Responsibility’, e-International Relations, 24/11/25

05Dec25

Abstract: In early October 2025, a fragile ceasefire allowed some semblance of education to resume in the Gaza Strip. At Al-Aqsa University, students celebrated becoming the first cohort to graduate since October 2023, a moment of joy amidst devastation. Across Gaza, children returned to learning in buildings with shattered walls, missing desks and chairs, and classrooms still crowded with families displaced by Israel’s two-year-long assault. Amid these scenes of improvisation and resilience, the enormity of what has been lost for Palestinian education is impossible to ignore. The widescale destruction of Gaza’s educational system during Israel’s recent war is not an unfortunate by-product of conflict. It is the latest and most extreme manifestation of what Palestinian scholar Karma Nabulsi termed scholasticide in 2009: the systematic, multi-faceted destruction of Palestinian education. Scholasticide is a central mechanism of settler-colonial elimination and meets the definitional criteria of genocide by targeting the social, cultural, and intellectual reproduction of a people. Understanding this destruction as structural rather than incidental is essential for recognising not only Israel’s longstanding policies toward Palestinian education and knowledge, but also the responsibilities and complicities of universities far beyond Palestine.

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Settler colonialism in Plateau State: Anthony Ime Umoh, ‘Implications of Indigene–Settler Conflicts on Socio-Economic Activities in Plateau State, 2000–2010’, Global Journal of Modern Research Emerging Trends, 1, 5, 2025

05Dec25

Abstract: The issue of indigene-settler rivalry was a major source of intractable violent conflict in Plateau State. The conflict pitched the indigenous ethnic groups against the Hausa/Fulani settlers, resulting in wanton destruction of lives and properties and the displacement of residents. While the crisis took on an ethno-religious pattern centred around identity, it resulted in the distortion of educational, religious, and social arrangements in Jos and other parts of the state, leading to a bifurcation along religious lines. This paper examines the implication of indigene/settler conflicts on the socio-economic activities in Plateau State. The paper argues that the effect of the sudden arrangements was as a result of the crisis which led to the forced relocation of residents to safe environments, the loss of properties in the affected areas, the distortion of the original master plan of Jos, and the development of slums in parts of the state. The paper blames this development on the indigene-settler dichotomy in Plateau State, which heightened the tempo of conflict rather than mitigating it.

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Cosettlering in settler America: Ruth Hemstad, Terje Rasmussen (eds), Nordic Transatlantic Crossings Emigration, Interaction and Democracy 1825-1945, Routledge, 2026

05Dec25

Description: Adopting a broad and transnational Nordic approach, this book highlights the interconnected, transatlantic and reciprocal processes of migration and democracy with Nordic crossings. It illuminates the connections, challenges and the broader democratic context, of transatlantic crossings of various kinds and explores the intertwined practises and experiences of Nordic mass migration and American democracy. By examining episodes, reflections and trends related to inter-Atlantic encounters that challenged established norms and policies, the book brings fresh insight into the significance of transatlantic connections at certain moments in time and helps describe the development of a transatlantic public sphere and a transcultural space. This book is of key interest to scholars and students of Nordic and Scandinavian studies, American-Scandinavian studies, North American history, political theory, history of political ideas, migration studies, and more broadly to history, political science, political sociology, and literature.

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Wakefield, Mill, Marx, settler colonialism: Philippe Gillig, ‘The Validity of Marx’s Critique of J. S. Mill’s Views on Systematic Colonization’, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2025

05Dec25

Abstract: In the final chapter of Capital I, Marx interprets the economists’ support for “systematic colonization” as an implicit admission that capitalism cannot be regarded as natural, because it needs violent state intervention. The system of colonisation devised by E. G. Wakefield consisted, indeed, in preventing new settlers arriving in the colonies from freely acquiring virgin lands, which forced them to become dependent on some capitalist. On this issue, one of Marx’s main targets is J. S. Mill. Although historians generally accept Marx’s critique, we defend the opposite view: Mill did not advocate the establishment of capitalism when supporting Wakefield.

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Tourism settler colonialism: Casey Moran, Joelle Soulard, William Stewart, ‘Settler Colonialism in Authorized Heritage Discourses’, Journal of Travel Research, 2025

04Dec25

Abstract: For tourism to be a force of social good, we must first contend with how tourism can contribute to dominating structures. This research explores settler colonial themes found in authorized heritage discourses in Berea, KY using multivocality as an analytical framework. Critical Discourse Analysis was used to better understand how authorized heritage discourses reinforce or resist settler colonial discourses. Three key themes of settler colonialism in Appalachia were reinforced, often through the absence of opposing discourse: the erasure of Black and Indigenous people, the heteropatriarchy, and the valorization of settler heroes. Researchers should connect absences with structures of domination and develop heritage management strategies emphasizing marginalized discourses. Multivocal heritage discourses resisted settler colonialism, indicating that multivocal heritage management may resist structures of domination. Heritage tourism can be a site where settler colonial themes are resisted, but practitioners and researchers must work intentionally to ensure marginalized communities are not harmed.

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Decolonial mapping represents Indigenous narratives: Karina Craig, Kaela Stewart, ‘Re-Centring First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Narratives’, Technology, 2025, pp. 331-345

04Dec25

Excerpt: Mapping, often perceived as a technical or neutral act, is fundamentally political. It is an act of selection: emphasizing some realities while excluding others, embedding subjective worldviews into seemingly objective forms. Every line drawn, every label inscribed, asserts biases, assumptions, and partialities of its maker. In this sense, mapping is never neutral—it is a site of power, negotiation, and imagination.

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When settler Libya was the model: Patrick Bernhard, ‘Libya, Mussolini, and the “White Race” : Fascist Colonialism and its Imprint on the British Empire’, in Cyrus Schayegh, David Motzafi-Haller (eds), Knowledge in Modern Transimperial History: Actors, Formations, Causes,Leiden University Press, 2025, pp. 203-233

04Dec25

Abstract: This chapter studies how journalists from Britain and key white dominions, especially Australia, collected knowledge on the fascist Italian empire’s settler-colonial efforts in the 1930s and in which complex ways they interpreted those efforts; and shows how such information helped shape contemporary political and administrative debates about Britain’s own settler-colonial efforts. In so doing, the chapter shows how people at the time saw differences and commonalities between their own colonial practices and the fascist vision of empire, what they deemed worthy of imitation and what they rejected, and how competing notions of empire were negotiated in sometimes fierce debates.

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