Mark McIntyre

Hi, I’m Mark McIntyre (he/him). I’m a cultural anthropology PhD student working with Dr. Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier.

My work engages with the processes of deindustrialization and post-industrialization in Canada and how communities left to live in, and around, industrial ruin repurpose industrial spaces while participating in world-making projects. How is future imagined in communities that are navigating processes of deindustrialization?

My interests intersect with visual anthropology and materiality, infrastructure and media studies, inequality and health, public anthropology, migration, and multimodal ethnographic methodologies. Regarding visual anthropology, I believe that incorporating arts-based practices, such as soundscape, video, photography, and others into our ethnographic toolkit helps to conceptualize aspects of places and experiences that we may not otherwise consider and serves to access emotional, sensorial, and subjective knowledges.

I completed a SSHRC funded MA at the University of Victoria (2018) which focused on how Cape Breton migrant labourers and their families eke out a living in the marginalized community of Glace Bay nearly 20 years after the last coal mines and steel plants closed. This work was the result of ethnographic fieldwork on Cape Breton Island and also incorporated elements of digital ethnography as a large part of the project was about understanding how migrant labourers and their families perform family and community online across long distances.

I happily hold a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and I am thankful to be able to continue my work regarding deindustrialization in Canada.