Treatied Spaces Research Group

Treatied Spaces is an interdisciplinary research group based at the University of Birmingham, UK. It brings together educators, Indigenous groups, museums, creative artists, NGOs and policymakers to foreground treaties and environmental concerns.

Our aim is to deepen understanding of treaties as living and contested instruments of inter-cultural diplomacy. Historic and contemporary treaties remain central to the quest for social and environmental justice across the globe and are a foundation for renewed and more balanced relationships between Indigenous and settler communities. They shape our understanding of sovereignty over land, resources, peoples and environments on earth, in the seas and in space.

As the world undergoes unprecedented resource, governance, and technological transitions, Indigenous peoples and their knowledge systems will play a vital role. 370 million Indigenous peoples steward or hold tenure rights over a quarter of the earth’s terrestrial surface. Their lands include over one-third of the world’s intact forest landscapes, plus a high proportion of the transboundary river basins and aquifer systems that form almost half of the earth's surface.

As a result, national and world organizations have called repeatedly for Indigenous solutions to help address some of the leading global challenges of our time - water conservation, the development of clean and other forms of energy, and climate change adaptation.

Crucially, a majority of energy transition minerals are on or near Indigenous lands. This makes Indigenous Peoples both uniquely vulnerable and pivotal to positive change.

Group leads

• Professor Joy Porter, Co-Director
• Professor Charles Prior, Co-Director

Core research team

• Dr Gloria Amaris Castro, Research and Innovation Associate (Choice Modelling, HHGC)
• Dr Briony Widdis, Research and Innovation Associate (Identities, HHGC)
• Lynn Wadding, Administrator (Historic Houses Global Crossroads)
• Dr Chloe Fyfe, Research Fellow
• Dr Damien Lee, Leverhulme Visiting Professor

Full list of collaborators

• Historic Houses, Global Crossroads: Revisioning Two Northern Ireland Historic Houses and Estates.
  AHRC Standard Research Grant (1.49M), 2024-27
• Wiitkamaganak: Adoption and the Resurgence of Anishinaabe Citizenship Law.
  Leverhulme Visiting Professorship (45K), 2024-2025
• Treatied States of America: Interior Diplomacy and the
  Contest for (Native) American Resources.
  Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (175K), 2024-27
• Brightening the Covenant Chain: Revealing Cultures of Diplomacy Between the Crown and the Iroquois Confederacy.
  AHRC Standard Research Grant (931K), 2021-25

• Connecting Cultures
• 21st Century Heritage Futures: Choice Modelling
• Diplomacy and Treaties
• Digital Storytelling
• Resource Use and Environmental Futures
• New Treatied Spaces

Pitch your idea for Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research, a Cambridge University Press print and digital short book series (20-30,000 words) run collaboratively with TSRG, University of Colorado, University of California, and National University of Singapore.

We are keen to hear from you if you would like to make a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary intervention within the rapidly growing area of Indigenous environmental research.

Overall, the series investigates how environmental issues and processes relate to Indigenous socio-economic, cultural and political dynamics.

Find out more

Or contact k.l.weir@bham.ac.uk / myw22@cantab.ac.uk