Elspeth Iralu
Assistant Professor
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Education
- Postdoc, Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities, Stanford University
- PhD, American Studies, University of New Mexico
- MPH, Community Health Promotion, University of Minnesota
- MAT, Secondary Teaching, Western New Mexico University
Research
- Indigenous geographies
- Indigenous methodologies
- Critical surveillance studies
- Critical digital geographies
- Counter-mapping
Elspeth Iralu (Angami Naga) is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Planning in the Department of Community & Regional Planning. She is Angami Naga from Khonoma village, Nagaland, and grew up in Gallup, New Mexico. Her research and teaching focus on Indigenous methodologies, Indigenous space, place, and mapping, and violence and visual culture. Iralu holds a Ph.D. in American studies from the University of New Mexico and a MPH from the University of Minnesota. She was a 2022-2023 Postdoctoral Mellon Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. Her work has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Foundation, and the Naga American Foundation. Iralu’s research in global Indigenous politics and Indigenous geographies examines how everyday militarism, enacted transnationally, shapes global colonial relations. Iralu’s community-based work is primarily located in her community-of-origin Nagaland, the U.S. southwest, and the U.S. upper midwest. Her book-in-progress attends to the theories that undergird spatial data collection and Indigenous mapping and considers how these spatial practices support and inhibit Indigenous self-determination, sovereignty, and spatial justice transnationally. Her scholarly writing has appeared in Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography, The New Americanist, Dialogues in Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Asian Diasporic Visual Culture and the Americas, and American Quarterly. In addition, she serves as an editor as part of the Editorial Collective of the open access journal ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies.
CRP 265, Sustainable Community Planning Methods
CRP 470, Artivism: Art+Activism
CRP 470/570 Indigenous Methodologies
CRP 534, Foundations of Indigenous Planning
CRP 538, Community Participatory Methods
CRP 588, Project DevelopmentPeer Reviewed Articles
“A Letter for Missing and Disappeared Archives.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. Vol. 23, No. 1, 2024.
"The World We Became: Map Quest 2350, A Speculative Atlas Beyond Climate Crisis." Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas 7, no. 1-2 (2022): 5-49. With Goffe, Tao Leigh, Shannon Gleeson, Atif Khan, Austin Kocher, Christin Washington, Judith Salcido, Rewa Phansalkar, Ryan Persadie, Anisa Jackson, Elspeth Iralu, Erica Violet Lee, Hashem Abushama, Nisrin Elamin, Randa Tawil, Citlali Sosa-Riddell, Esmeralda Arrizón-Palomera, Kelsey Moore, Lydia Macklin Camel, Mónica Ramírez Bernal, Nancy Morales, Amanda Pinheiro, Ana Ozaki, André Nascimento, Christopher Roberts, Essah Díaz, Reighan Gillam, Juhwan Seo, Priyanka Sen, Andrea Chung, Melanie Puka, Tauren Nelson, and Heidi Amin-Hong.
“Putting Indian Country on the Map: Indigenous Practices of Spatial Justice.” Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography. Vol. 53, No. 5, 2021. pp. 1485-1502.
“On Violence, Seen Remotely.” American Quarterly. Volume 72, Number 4, 2020.
“Hell You Talm Bout: Mixtapes as Method for Online Environmental Justice Pedagogy.” Co-author with Caitlin Grann. Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy. Volume 7, Issue 2, 2020. With Caitlin Grann.
“Transnational American Studies as Contrapuntal Methodology.” The New Americanist. Volume 1, Issue 1, 2018.
Book Chapters
“Colonization Calls My Home a Disturbed Area: A Conversation.” In For Anti-Facist Futures: Against the Violence of Imperial Crisis, edited by Alyosha Goldstein and Simón Ventura Trujillo, pp. 113-130. New York: Common Notions Press, 2022. With Dolly Kikon.
Public Scholarship
“What Nagas Eat: Sovereignty and Kinship Under Lockdown.” Species in Peril. Volume 2, Number 1, 2021. Invited to republish by Scroll.in under headline “Why are Indians so preoccupied with what Nagas eat, whether it is dogs, bats, or falcons?” February 22, 2021.
“During the Pandemic.” Morung Express. January 4, 2021, republished under the same title in Arunachal Times. January 6, 2021.
Ongoing Projects
Desirable Futures Collective
Indigenous Atmospheres, with Prof. Jen Rose Smith (University of Washington)
Editorial Work
Editor, Editorial Collective, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies
Contributing Editor, Species in Peril
Manuscript Review: Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Gender, Place, and Culture, Projections: The Journal of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
2022-2023 Postdoctoral Mellon Fellow, Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities, Stanford Humanities Center, Stanford University
2021-2022 Bilinski Foundation Fellowship, University of New Mexico
2021 Wise-Susman Award, American Studies Association
2018 Dr. Aryo M. Shishak Memorial Graduate Award, Naga American Foundation
