Dr Jeremy Schmidt

Profile

My research focuses on the social dimensions of land, water, and energy, with particular attention to the ethical and political dimensions of human impacts on the Earth system. I have a long-term research project focused on these issues in the Canadian province of Alberta, where I examine colonial histories of water policy, the formation of oil economies, and the role of geosciences in state legitimacy and Indigenous dispossession.

My teaching draws on my research interests to engage with the many ways that different societies understand and relate to their environments, all of which animate my 2nd year module: Science, Ethics, and Environmental Policy. I also teach on the specialist 1st year module, Cities and Regions in Transition, on the BA (Hons) Human Geography programme. At the post-graduate level I teach on modules examining geographic thought, methods, and research design.

I co-edit the journal Area, published by the Royal Geographical Society and am  actively involved in several international networks, including Water Future and the United Nations Dialogue on Earth Jurisprudence.

Prior to joining QMUL in January 2024, I was Associate Professor of Human Geography at Durham University, where I worked from 2017-2023. Before that, I was Assistant Professor of Environmental Geography at Carleton University (2015-2016). I held post-doctoral positions in social anthropology at Dalhousie University (2014-15) and Harvard University (2012-2014). In 2015, I received an Impact Award (Talent Category), the highest distinction bestowed by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My PhD was conferred by the University of Western Ontario in 2012, where I held a Trudeau Scholarship and a SSHRC Fellowship.

Teaching

In my classes, students can expect a learning environment that is supportive, engaging, and which challenges them to achieve their best work. Some of my previous students have published their coursework in the undergraduate journal Routes, and I encourage students to think about how their time in the classroom can do more than just aim for a grade and how it can support career or personal goals. 

Students who are my advisees or whose dissertations I supervise can expect support from the start of our time together through to after your time at QMUL. I have helped students to secure employment in government, to pursue further study across a range of disciplines and institutions, and in pursuing new career paths. Several of my dissertation students have been recognised nationally for their dissertation research, and others have published their work in outlets like the Journal of Undergraduate Ethnography and cultural geographies.

 

I currently teach on the following modules:

 

1^st Year: Cities and Regions in Transition [GEG4006]

Cities and Regions in Transition provides first-year BA Human Geography students with an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the transformation of British and North American cities in the neoliberal era. Through the course students will develop a theoretically informed and empirically in-depth understanding of key processes and events that reflect and/or have shaped processes of neoliberal urbanisation in and across cities in the UK and North America.

 

2^nd Year: Science, Ethics, and Environmental Policy [GEG5157]

This module examines how knowledges produced through different scientific practices affect environmental decision making. It critically situates the histories of science and ethics that have shaped key environmental policies, such as those affecting resource conservation and sustainability. It examines how Indigenous, citizen, feminist, and ecological sciences have challenged the practices of dominant knowledge and policy frameworks. It covers multiple environmental topics at local and global scales through methods and workshops that equip students with concrete analytical tools and an expanded ethical repertoire.

 

Postgraduate: Geographic Thought and Practice/Research Methods and Design [GEG7135/GEG7120]

The module provides master's level research training in human geography and related social science disciplines. The module covers core understandings of key concepts and approaches to human geography and social sciences research; subject specific research and transferable skills; and qualitative and quantitative, subject specific methodological and presentation techniques. This module will equip students with the skills necessary to independently design and implement an extended piece of primary dissertation research.

Research

Research Interests:

My research focuses on the social dimensions of land, water, and energy, with particular attention to the ethical and political dimensions of human impacts on the Earth system.

 

In my first book, Water: Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity (NYU Press, 2017), I detailed the intellectual history of America’s water management philosophy. I was especially interested in how claims from geology and American social sciences (notably anthropology and geography) combined to make water a ‘resource’ in the United States. This story matters because water management in the U.S. came to shape emerging understandings of the Earth system in the Anthropocene and, ultimately, paced global governance agendas that ultimately aligned sustainability with the securing of the water-energy-food-climate nexus.

 

My first book was a kind of prequel to a project I am now near to completing as my next book, which draws together 18 years of work on water and energy in the Canadian province of Alberta. Alberta holds the 4th largest reserve of fossil fuels on the planet and 75% of Canada’s irrigated land. The book explains how the state relates to land and water through different geosciences—from geology and paleogeography through to human geography. Those forms of knowledge are not merely used for extractive ends or to dispossess Indigenous peoples; they constitute an important aspect of how the state legitimates itself through the environment. The ‘prequel’ relationship to the first book is that Alberta has a habit of drawing its environmental policy from international sources, and so understanding those broader contexts has taken me through archives in the US, the UK, Canada and to historical work on Australia, the former USSR, and India (among others).

 

With Simon Meisch (Tübingen University) I am co-editing a new volume on Ethics and the Planetary Boundaries, under contract with Cambridge University Press. The project brings together 18 scholars from across disciplines and different parts of the world to critically examine the normative aspects of the planetary boundaries framework. This is a long-standing interest of mine (and Simon’s) regarding intersections of ethics, science, and the Anthropocene.

 

Finally, I have begun work on new water technologies in the Global South (an imperfect term for the majority world). These technologies, known as ‘water ATMs’ or “anytime water kiosks” are rapidly becoming a favoured solution to delivering clean water to communities otherwise underserved, or unserved, through formal water infrastructures. They also challenge many informal and alternative forms of water service provision in ways that are key to understanding for their economic and social effects.

Publications

Selected Publications (full list on google scholar) 

*All of my articles are freely available, if you do not have access please email me* 

 

Authored Books 

Schmidt, J.J. (2017) Water: abundance, scarcity, and security in the age of humanity. New York: New York University Press. 

Matthews, N. and Schmidt, J.J. (2017) Global challenges in water governance: environments, economies, societies. London: Palgrave. 

 

Edited Books 

Meisch, S. and Schmidt, J.J. (under contract). Ethics and planetary boundaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Brown, P.G. and Schmidt, J.J. (2010). Water ethics: foundational readings for students and professionals. Washington DC: Island Press. 

 

Selected Articles (*student authors) 

Schmidt, J.J. (2024) Geography and ethics III: description as a matter of moral concern. Progress in Human Geography.

Schmidt, J.J. (2024) Live archives: freedom of information requests as political methodology. Canadian Geographies.

*Nixon, I. and Schmidt, J.J. (2024) Multispecies thought from the shadows: the associated worlds of dog-walking. cultural geographies 31(2): 197-212.

Schmidt, J.J. (2023) From integration to intersectionality: a review of water ethics. Water Alternatives 16(2): 321-345. 

Schmidt, J.J. (2023) Geography and ethics II: justification and the ethics of anti-oppression. Progress in Human Geography 

Schmidt, J.J. (2023) Earth stewardship, water resilience, and ethics in the Anthropocene. Global Sustainability 6e15 (1-8). 

Liao, Y.K. & Schmidt, J.J. (2023) Hydrosocial geographies: cycles, spaces, and spheres of concern. Progress in Environmental Geography 2(4): 240-265. 

Schmidt, J.J. (2022) Of kin and system: rights of nature and the UN search for Earth jurisprudence. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 47(3): 820-834. 

Schmidt, J.J. (2022) Geography and ethics I: placing injustice in the Anthropocene. Progress in Human Geography 46(4): 1086-1094. 

Schmidt, J.J. (2022) Dispossession by municipalization: property, pipelines, and divisions of power in settler colonial Canada. EPC: Politics and Space 40(5): 1182-1199. 

Schmidt, J.J. (2021) Glacial deaths, geologic extinction. Environmental Humanities 13(2): 281-300. 

Belcher, O. & Schmidt, J.J. (2021) Being earthbound: Arendt, process, and alienation in the Anthropocene. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 39(1): 103-120. 

Schmidt, J.J. (2020) Settler geology: Earth’s deep history and the governance of in situ oil spills in Alberta. Political Geography 78: 102132 (pp1-11). 

Schmidt, J.J. (2020) Pop-up infrastructure: Water ATMs and new delivery networks in India. Water Alternatives 13(1): 119-140. 

Schmidt, J.J. (2019) The moral geography of the Earth system. Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers 44(4): 721-734. 

Schmidt, J.J. (2018) Bureaucratic territory: First Nations, private property, and “turn-key” colonialism in Canada. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108(4): 901-916. 

Schmidt, J.J. and Matthews, N. (2018) From state to system: financialization and the water-energy-food-climate nexus. Geoforum 91: 151-159.

Schmidt, J.J. (2017) Social learning in the Anthropocene: novel challenges, shadow networks, and ethical practices. Journal of Environmental Management 193: 373-380.

Schmidt, J.J. (2017) Water policy in Alberta: settler-colonialism, community, and capital. Journal of the Southwest 59(1-2): 204-226.

Schmidt, J.J., Brown, P.G. & Orr, C.J. (2016) Ethics in the Anthropocene: a research agenda. The Anthropocene Review 3(3): 188-200.

Schmidt, J.J. (2014) Water management and the procedural turn: norms and transitions in Alberta. Water Resources Management 28(4): 1127-1141.

Supervision

I have supervised three PhD students to completion and am currently co-supervising two others. These projects tackle a range of environmental issues, from the politics and ethics of the “Day Zero” water crisis in Cape Town and shrimp farming in the Mekong Delta through to political ecologies of water in peri-urban India and sea ice mobilities in the Bering Strait.

If you are interested in pursuing a high-impact PhD project and have a proposal idea you would like to discuss I would be delighted to hear from you. I have a broad range of interests that intersect across themes of environment, epistemologies, and ethics. These range from the history and philosophy of environmental ideas through to the concrete social forces and policies that shape contemporary environmental debates within and beyond geography.

 

Current PhD Students

• Thuil Montana. The politics and ethics of water security in Cape Town. School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, co-supervised with Dr Cameron Harrington.
• Marcin Stanek. Decolonial education in Bolivia. Department of Geography, Durham University, co-supervised with Prof Cheryl McEwan.

 

Completed PhD Students

• Greta Ferloni (2024). Cryomobilities: vessel mobilities amid the ice-prone waters of the Bering Strait. Department of Geography, Durham University, co-supervised with Prof Phil Steinberg and Prof Chris Stokes.
• Dr Aditya Singh (2023). Of rurban and its waters. Department of Geography, Durham University, co-supervised with Dr Andrés Luque-Ayala.

• Dr Yu-Kai Liao (2022). Making shrimp economies and hydro-social lives: the hatchery, the shrimp farm, and the laboratory. Department of Geography, Durham University, co-supervised with Prof Gavin Bridge.