Marina Bell

As a scholar, I employ critical, de-colonial, and abolitionist perspectives to challenge systems of power that perpetuate oppression, inequity, and unsustainable relationships with the planet, practically and ideologically. My scholarship—currently at the intersection of abolition and environmental justice—aims to disrupt oppressive power structures, contribute to the empowerment and autonomy of marginalized groups, and aid in transforming sociological and ecological conditions in order to create a future that is habitable, equitable, just, and liberated. I have published my work internationally, in journals such as Law and Social Inquiry, Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order, Champ pénal/Penal Field, and Feminist Pedagogy. This approach also directly shapes my work as an educator. I practice culturally responsive pedagogy that promotes active engagement, critical thinking, and analytical skills in students from all backgrounds, and I work to create an inclusive classroom setting that encourages students to learn from one another, and to see themselves as agents of social change. My program of research centers on abolition, the eco-climate crisis, and the role of historically othered knowledge traditions in providing solutions to the problems of carceral state hegemony and ecological catastrophe—problems I see as deeply intertwined. In my work I define abolition as the idea of eliminating carceral institutions and replacing them with non-punitive ways of addressing harm that empower rather than oppress impacted people and communities. I aim not only to advance scholarship, but to help bring about social change by producing research that acts as a bridge between academic, policy, and activist efforts to address injustice and advance visions of progressive change.

Currently, I am working on the theoretical and analytical foundations for a project that explores the intersection between carceral abolition and eco-climate crisis work, and ultimately argues that these are inseparable parts of the same project—necessary for liberation, challenging the hegemony of carceral state, and preserving the future of the planet. I employ a theoretical analytical approach to demonstrate how the Western materialist, reductionist worldview and knowledge paradigm that has resulted in the climate catastrophe is part of the same oppressive, colonialist, neo-liberal, capitalist, white-supremacist ideology that upholds the existence of the carceral state. This work engages Indigenous scholarship and other foreclosed, oppositional, transformative epistemologies, and knowledge sources, such as those of Black, queer, feminist, indigenous, and disabled individuals and groups, arguing that it is fundamental to center these perspectives in order to achieve the necessary shift away from the materialist, reductionist, colonialist, carceral paradigm, to build a future based on liberation, equity, and sustainability. Specifically, it explores certain indigenous and pre-Christian spiritual traditions and mythologies that offer other ways of understanding and imagining how to be—in relationship with each other, and with the earth. These include earth-based spiritual practices, traditional ecological knowledge, and animist beliefs. I am developing the argument that if we want an abolitionist future on a planet that is still here, and habitable, we will need to adopt a view of the world, and each other, that causes us to treat it, and each other, differently. The perspective that is necessary for a sustainable relationship with the planet and our non-human relatives is same perspective that is necessary to achieve and sustain the liberation sought through abolition. These alternative forms and sources of knowledge, and their accompanying cosmologies, I argue, can help us achieve both.