Liam Midzain-Gobin

Assistant Professor, Political Science

Liam Midzain-Gobin

Ph.D.: McMaster University (2020)
M.A.: University of Ottawa (2015)
B.Soc.Sci.: University of Ottawa (2012)

Office: Plaza 353
905-688-5550 x3987
lmidzaingobin@brocku.ca

Dr. Midzain-Gobin is a settler scholar whose research focuses on the production and continual remaking of settler colonialism, and Indigenous governance practices. In particular, he focuses on questions of sovereignty: how the settler state aims to legitimize its own rule, and how Indigenous nations contest this by practicing their own ongoing sovereignty.

Dr. Midzain-Gobin’s research is grounded in his background in critical international relations and decolonial theory. He studies Indigenous-settler relationships as a form of international politics, and shows how European engagements with Indigenous nations have helped shape our state-led international order – and illustrate its limitations. Key to this work is a focus on cosmologies and the erasure of Indigenous ways of knowing in government policymaking. Currently, Dr. Midzain-Gobin is completing a book in which he argues that the ongoing (re)production of settler colonialism in what is today Canada is made possible through the imposition of a racialized, imperial ‘logic of improvement,’ that has become a ‘settler common sense’ underpinned by cosmological assumptions about human dominion over the earth.

This approach to studying the international is also reflected in Dr. Midzain-Gobin working with Dr. Heather Smith, Dr. David Black, and Dr. David Hornsby to co-edit a Handbook titled “Critical Understandings of Canada in the World.”

Alongside this work, Dr. Midzain-Gobin seeks to employ community-engaged methods to support Indigenous self-determination, working directly with communities and nations to build a decolonized future. Dr. Midzain-Gobin has two ongoing projects using this approach:

  • Building Inter-National Sovereignty: The Case of the Big Salmon River, funded by an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
  • Indigenous Visions for Making Home in Niagara, funded by a David S. Howes Grant from the Niagara Community Foundation

In addition to his research, Dr. Midzain-Gobin is also an Associate Editor with Critical Studies on Security, and teaches in the areas of Indigenous politics, settler colonialism and Indigenous/settler relations, and research methods.

Areas of specialization:

Indigenous politics; Settler colonialism; Coloniality; Indigenous-settler relationships; Critical approaches to international politics; Decolonial political and international thought

Publications

Academic Journal Articles:

Reports, Studies, Etc.:

Book Chapters:

  • Cowie, C. & L. Midzain-Gobin. 2022. “Progress or the status-quo: Indigenous peoples, participation and representation” in The Canadian Federal Election 2021 ed. Pammett, J. & C. Dornan. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. ISBN: 9780228013822: pgs. 220-245.

Book Reviews:

Other:

Teaching Areas

Courses taught at Brock University:

  • POLI 2F20: Introduction to International Relations
  • POLI 2P80: Introduction to Research Design and Methods
  • POLI/CANA 3P14: Indigenous Politics in Canada
  • POLI 3P96: Global Indigenous Politics
  • POLI/CANA 4/5P37: Indigenous-Settler Relations in Canada and Beyond
  • POLI 5P81: Research and Research Methods

Student Supervision

Dr. Midzain-Gobin is open to supervising graduate student research projects in the following fields:

  • Indigenous politics
  • Settler Colonialism
  • Critical and/or decolonial international politics