Dr. Eli Nelson (Mohawk)(Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative (NASI) Postdoctoral Fellow) is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at Williams College and Director of Research at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies. He earned his PhD in the History of Science at Harvard University in 2018. Nelson's current book project, Sovereign Knowledge: Native Informants, Settler Occupation, and the Becoming of Native Science, traces the history of what we have come to call Native science in the epistemological constructions of Indigenous subjects and objects under U.S. settler scientific regimes and transitioning Indigenous political formations in the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition to the history of Native science, Nelson works on Indigenous affect, science fiction and futurism, and gender and sexuality.
Research Project: “Sovereign Knowledge: Native Informants, Settler Occupation, and the Becoming of Native Science”