Sal Suri
Research Interests: History of technology; environmental history; aquatic history; ocean studies; science policy; environmental justice.
Sal Suri is a settler from Dish with One Spoon treaty territory (Toronto, Canada). Their dissertation historicizes the in which the expansion of colonial-capitalist infrastructures and technologies of mobility from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Superior have reshaped local ecologies in the Great Lakes Region. Focusing on the movement of planktonic diatoms, the sea lamprey, and the zebra mussel, they contextualize “species invasions” within broader histories of colonialism, capitalism, migration, and labor. Through a multi-modal investigation of legislative, chemical, and technological management approaches funded by the U.S. and Canadian governments from an infrastructural perspective, they argue that state-funded conservation projects are designed to prioritize the maintenance of economically valuable ecologies, rather than directly addressing the colonial-capitalist systems through which the shifting ecological realities are formed.
They currently hold fellowships with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Canada Program and the Warren Center for Studies in American History. Their research has additionally been generously funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and Clements Library at the University of Michigan.
Publications:
Suri, S. “‘The Wanderings of Plankton’: What Diatoms Crossing Oceans Might Say About Ballast Water and Mobility Justice.” Special Edition of Anthropological Quarterly (Forthcoming, 2026)
Soto Laveaga, Gabriela, Lucía Granados Riveros, and Salina Suri. “Malleable Bodies: Race and Mexican Diets in Twentieth-Century Nutrition Science.” In Handbook of the Historiography of Latin American Studies on the Life Sciences and Medicine. Historiographies of Science. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2021.
Garrett, Frances, Laila Stradz, Alysse Kennedy, Matt Price, and Salina Suri. “Learning Outdoors and the Humanities Classroom.” Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education 32, no. 1 (Fall 2019): 4– 18
Presentations:
Panel Organizer and Chair: “Life in/through/by elemental infrastructures,” a co-convened panel with Lindsey LeBlanc presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science, July 2024.
“‘The Wanderings of Plankton’: What Diatoms out of Place Might Say about Ships.” Presented at the annual meeting for the History of Science Society, November 2023.
Panelist and Panel Organizer: “Unsettling Taxonomic Difference: Caring for More-Than-Human Ecologies,” a co-organized panel with Hina Walajahi presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science, Cholula, Mexico, December 2022.
“Stranger Tides: Investigating the Restoration of Good Relations with Ballast-Disrupted Ecologies.” Presented at “Good Relations,” the Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science on the panel “Becoming with Water,” Toronto, Canada (Virtual), October 2021
Previous Degrees:
B.A., History and Forestry Conservation, University of Toronto