Dr. Nicholas Scott鈥檚 research focuses on more-than-human sociology, mobility and ecology. He examines environmental crises, such as biodiversity collapse, mass extinction and roadkill, and their root causes鈥撯�損articularly human supremacism, the hegemonic fiction that places sapiens at the pinnacle of a natural moral hierarchy that configures other species as our exploitable property. His current work follows the sociotechnical and political production of human supremacism in North America, especially through urban sprawl and the system of automobility鈥撯�搃ncluding the greenwashing of the electric car. He also investigates moral and material antidotes and alternatives to human supremacism, such as multispecies democracy, interspecies justice, plant personhood and active travel.

Current possibilities for graduate supervision could include projects that theoretically and empirically investigate:

• relations between the system of automobility, mining and mass extinction
• mutually reinforcing linkages between social and interspecies injustice
• the role of sociology in perpetuating human supremacism鈥撯�揳nd emerging moral and political sociologies that include other-than-human persons and societies
• the complex origins and futures of human supremacism, from the early 鈥渨heat state鈥� and settler-colonialism to hegemonic automobility and AI
• the role AI can play in facilitating multispecies communication and democracy
• relations between human supremacism and the far-right
• hopeful alternatives to human supremacism: e.g. multispecies democracy, including other-than-human citizenship and sovereignty; interspecies mobility justice; non-western formations of more-than-human kinship
• multispecies authoritarianism and multispecies fascism
• everyday practices that confront and de-habituate human supremacism, such as cycling, walking and rolling with nature in ways that spark our wonder for other-than-human beings as morally worthy and socially constructed persons
• cat citizenship and cats鈥� right to the city (and that of other domesticates and denizens)
• plant, animal and fungal personhood and political agency
• ethological experiments in reassembling community and prefiguring 鈥渢he good multispecies city鈥�
• de-roading: shifting from wildlife overpasses (bandaid solution) to unbuilding highways for private automobiles (structural solution)
• sociotechnical constructions of a decolonized 鈥渨ilderness鈥� and 鈥渘ature鈥� through public transit and longer distance active travel networks
• campaigns against flying and highway building
• campaigns for interurban rail travel and universal transit in Canada

PhD, Sociology, Carleton University, Ontario

MA Sociology, Carleton University, Ontario

BA Hons., Sociology & Political Science, University of King鈥檚 College, Nova Scotia

More-than-human sociology; mass extinction; biodiversity loss; urban sprawl; the system of automobility; interspecies mobility justice; human supremacism; multispecies democracy; active travel; qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods

Books

•  (2020). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• Scott, N. & Travers. (2023). 鈥淓-micromobility, Cycling, and 鈥楪ood鈥� Active Travel.鈥� Active Travel Studies 3(1).
• Travers, N. Scott, K. J. Reed, P. Hall, M. Winters, G. Kwan, & K. Park (2023). 鈥淢oral Panic and Electric Micromobilities: Seeking Space for Mobility Justice.鈥� Sociological Perspectives, 0(0).
• Scott, N. (2022). 鈥淟onger Distance Cycling for Interspecies Mobility Justice in Canada.鈥� Active Travel Studies 2(2): 1鈥�16.
• Scott, N. (2020).鈥淲here can cycling lift the common good? Regional political culture and fossil capitalism play a role,鈥� Journal of Transport Geography, 86.
• Scott, N. (2020). 鈥淎 political theory of interspecies mobility justice,鈥� Mobilities.
• Scott, N. (2019). 鈥淐alibrating the go-along for the Anthropocene,鈥� International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 23: (3) 317-328.
• Scott, N. and J. Siltanen. (2017). 鈥淚ntersectionality and quantitative methods: assessing regression from a feminist perspective,鈥� International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 20 (4): 373-385.
• Scott, N. (2016). 鈥淐ycling, Performance and the Common Good: Copenhagenizing Canada鈥檚 Capital,鈥� Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 25: (1) 22-37.
• Scott, N. (2013). 鈥淟ike a Fish Needs a Bicycle: Henri Lefebvre and the Liberation of Transportation,鈥� Space & Culture, 16 (3): 397鈥�410.

Edited Book Chapters

• Scott, N. (2022). 鈥淎gainst Environmentalism for the Common Good: A Theoretical Model.鈥� In (eds.) David Tindall, Mark C.J. Stoddart and Riley E. Dunlap. Handbook of Anti-Environmentalism, Edgar.
• Scott, N. (2021). 鈥淐ity Cycling After COVID-19 for Interspecies Mobility Justice.鈥� In (eds.) Rianne Van Melik, Pierre Filion, and Brian Doucet. Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities: Volume 3: Public Space and Mobility, Bristol University Press.
• Scott, N. (2021). 鈥淣ew wilderness mobilities: Cycling against climate change, mass extinction and habitat destruction.鈥� In (eds.) Dennis Zuev, Katerina Psarikidou and Cosmin Popan. Cycling Societies: Innovations, Inequalities, and Governance, Routledge.
• Vannini, P. and Scott, N. (2020).鈥淢obile ethnographies of the city.鈥� In (eds.) Ole B. Jensen, Claus Lassen, Vincent Kaufmann, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen and Ida Sofie G酶tzsche Lange. Handbook of Urban Mobilities, Routledge.
• Scott, N. (2019). 鈥淓cologizing Lefebvre: Urban Mobilities & the Production of Nature.鈥� In (eds.) Michael E. Leary-Owhin and John P. McCarthy, Handbook of Henri Lefebvre, the City and Urban Society, Routledge.
• Scott, N. (2012). 鈥淗ow Car-Drivers Took the Streets: Critical Planning Moments of Automobility,鈥� In (eds.) Phillip Vannini, Paola Jiron, Ole B. Jensen, Lucy Budd, and Christian Fisker, Technologies of Mobility in the Americas, Peter Lang Publishing.

Journal Editorials

• Sodero, S. and N. Scott. (2016). 鈥淐ontentious Mobilities,鈥� Canadian Journal of Sociology 41 (3): 257-276.
• Davidson, T. and N. Scott. (2016). 鈥淥ttawa Studies,鈥� Canadian Journal of Urban Research 25 (1): 1-7.

• Scott, N. 鈥溾�� in The Globe and Mail, May 1, 2020.